


bittersweet

by dandelionlighters



Category: Legacies (TV 2018)
Genre: Comic-Con, F/F, Road Trip
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:27:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24989065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandelionlighters/pseuds/dandelionlighters
Summary: “—Basically it’s a glorified comic-con.”“Lizzie,” Alaric scolds, looking almost nervous as he tries to convince his daughter. “It’ll be fun! There’s going to be lots of cool stuff...like ripper panels where experts give advice on self control...werewolf pack dynamic seminars...a few magic and spell demos...”Hope isn’t impressed, having tuned out half of his boring speech. “So, what, we got invited?”“Kind of.” Now the man looks even more nervous. Hope smiles at that. “I volunteered you as a guest speaker so they gave me ten free tickets.”Her smile slips off her face.Or,The super squad goes to the San Diego Supernatural Convention for the first time.
Relationships: Hope Mikaelson/Josie Saltzman
Comments: 141
Kudos: 618





	1. Chapter 1

Hope stands in Alaric’s office, crossing her arms over her chest and tapping her foot impatiently. 

It’s been about ten minutes since the headmaster had summoned her out of her fourth period Chemistry of Magic class to begin with, and he still hasn’t explained why. 

When the tribrid first came into his office, Jed, Kaleb, and MG were already waiting inside. Hope knows for a fact that the three boys share the same Physical Education period right now. 

Josie, Lizzie, and Alyssa—all in fourth period Chemistry of Magic as well—were called over the intercom alongside Hope, but she had quite literally left all her stuff at her desk and ditched the class as quickly as possible in order to avoid having to roam the hallways alone with the girls. 

As a result, the three enter the office five minutes after Hope, with Lizzie and Alyssa wearing matching scowls on their faces. Josie stands between them, a pale-pink blush on her own face, her shoulders heaving slightly. 

She looks almost...out of breath. 

Feeling oddly flushed herself, Hope glances away just as Ms. Tig and Mr. Williams swing open the double doors of the large office. 

“What was so important that you had to call me out of a therapy session, Doctor Saltzman?” Ms. Tig asks, her eyebrows knitted together. Hope can barely make out any of the woman’s words through her weird accent. 

“You call him Doctor Saltzman?” Lizzie wrinkles her nose, as if hearing this for the first time. “Aren’t you, like, _forty_?” 

Hope smothers the secret laugh bubbling up her throat with her hand. It gets harder when she catches the mildly offended expression on Miss Tig’s face. 

Whatever. She isn’t going to give Lizzie the satisfaction of having made her laugh. 

“It’s a sign of respect.” Ms. Tig drops her mouth open and scoffs, even placing an unsettled hand over her heart. Lizzie has the nerve to stare back at the woman blankly until Josie elbows the blonde in the side. 

Alaric chooses to ignore them. 

“I was teaching a class, Ric!” Mr. Williams yells the next moment, looking a little angrier than the situation calls for. 

Alaric chooses to ignore him, too. 

“Okay, now that everyone’s here, we can get started,” he begins, clasping his hands together with a mix of excitement and nerves. He then raises his eyes to the ceiling, almost as if summoning the courage to reveal his big announcement. 

Hope rolls her eyes at the dramatics of it all. 

“A couple of days ago, an old friend of mine brought to my attention something I think all of you would be interested in.” Alaric sweeps his gaze over his students and staff with a weird sparkle in his eyes. 

Hope doesn’t think she’s ever seen him this excited about something. 

Actually, no, she has. There _was_ that time a year or two ago when he had discovered an ancient Egyptian artifact that had confirmed a conspiracy theory of his about mummies. 

Yes, looking back, Hope can distinctly remember the man nearly bubbling over in happiness that day. 

“He called it the SDSC,” Alaric explains, “otherwise known as the San Diego Supernatural Convention. It’s a two-day eventhappening next week. Supposedly, it’ll allow vampires, witches, and werewolves to convene and discuss all things supernatural in a peaceful, united setting. Apparently, hundreds are scheduled to be in attendance.” 

God, he sounds like he’s reading off of an advertisement pamphlet. 

“That doesn’t seem dangerous at all,” Hope cuts in sarcastically, not liking the idea of this one bit. She also doesn’t like where the man is going with this. Does he really think that they can just leave the school in the middle of the semester? 

A few murmurs of agreement follow behind her. 

“Okay, okay,” Alaric relents, putting his hands up in surrender. “While this does sound a _little_ risky, my friend assured me that there would be preemptive measures put in place for our safety and security.” 

“Like?” Lizzie speaks up, examining her cuticles absentmindedly. 

“Well, we didn’t get that far.” A couple of groans and sighs follow. Alaric rushes to talk over the impending complaints, speaking nearly too fast to make sense. “But it’s an amazing learning experience, as well as a great chance to meet other supernaturals. You can talk to people like you, learn from others not like you. Get a taste of their struggles and lives. Take part in fun activities—“ 

Lizzie interrupts him with another deep sigh, turning to the rest of the group with her own opinion. 

“—Basically it’s a glorified comic-con.” 

“Lizzie,” Alaric scolds, looking almost nervous as he tries to convince his daughter. “It’ll be fun! There’s going to be lots of cool stuff...like ripper panels where experts give advice on self control...werewolf pack dynamics and curse trigger seminars...a few magic and spell demos...” 

Hope isn’t impressed, having tuned out half of his boring speech. “So, what, we got invited?” she asks. 

“Kind of.” Now the man looks even more nervous. Hope smiles at that. “I volunteered you as a guest speaker so they gave me ten free tickets.” 

Her smile slips off her face. 

“You did what?” The tribrid’s bottom lip curls into a snarl of its own accord, her teeth gritting against each other angrily. 

A pin could have fallen and everyone in the room would have heard it. 

Alaric’s throat bobs as he loudly gulps down the anxious lump in his throat, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. “Tickets can get pretty expensive for these types of events. They also offered us complimentary hotel reservations, free valet parking, an open bar...” 

Hope rolls her eyes at the last part. Alaric Saltzman has always been somewhat of an alcoholic. 

“It was a hard opportunity to pass up,” the man concludes, his hand now scratching the scruff of his short beard. 

“Wait, Dad,” Lizzie says, urgently enough that the entire room falls to silence again. She pauses, lowering her voice scandalously. “Are we...” 

She makes a face. “ _Poor_?” 

“No, no, Sweetie—“ 

“Then I ask that you call and take everything back right this instant!” Lizzie shoots daggers at the man. “We are not...”

Another face. 

“...Hope Mikaelson’s charity case.” 

“Hey,” Hope says, kind of offended, trying not to let it on. “My father donated millions to this school.” 

“Your father can go burn in hell,” Lizzie spits back, with a sickly-sweet tone. Josie whips her head at her sister in shock. 

“Ha!” Hope laughs in the blonde’s face, with no small amount of spite. Her joy at knowing that she’s about to one-up Lizzie Saltzman is written clear across her face. “Hell doesn’t exist anymore!” 

Lizzie recoils, opening her mouth and closing it several times. Hope basks in her silence with a pleased smile. 

“Enough, girls.” Alaric shakes his head, looking at the both of them with disappointment. Hope wonders why, since it’s not like she was the one that had started their little squabble. 

“We’re all going to the convention.” There is no room left for argument in his tone. “End of discussion. Everyone, pack your suitcases. We leave the morning after tomorrow.”

—

The trip to San Diego from Mystical Falls takes three days and sixteen hours. 

Of course, Hope thinks, it probably would have taken much quicker if Alaric hadn’t been too cheap to buy everyone plane tickets, but no one had openly complained about that small detail except for Alyssa Chang. 

As a result, they end up piling three teachers and seven students into an eight-passenger SUV. Yeah, Alaric had also refused to take more than one vehicle for the road trip. So, while he gets to drive in comfort, some of his students have to sit on each other’s laps. 

Josie offers to sit on Lizzie’s, and Jed definitely does not offer to sit on Kaleb’s, but he loses a three way rock-paper-scissors match between all the boys, so he doesn’t really have much of a choice. 

Emma and Dorian get into the car first, politely taking the first two of the three seats in the back. 

Hope steps inside next, ignoring the odd hand gestures all the boys are throwing at each other as they argue quietly. The tribrid settles herself into the middle seat. She knows that no one will dare ask to sit on her lap. 

Or maybe not. 

“Can we share a seat, Hopey?” Alyssa comes to a stand outside the open car door, having just completed her given task of magically shrinking everyone’s suitcases into a single bag. 

(Lamely enough, Hope’s _own_ task had been to pack snacks and drinks.) 

The tribrid doesn’t very much like the flirtatious tone the other girl is using or the rather awful nickname. She growls and snaps her teeth together in warning. “I’ll fucking eat you.” 

Alyssa only giggles and moves past her to the last back seat, interrupting Emma and Dorian’s private conversation with a witty one-liner Hope misses completely, due to Lizzie shoving Josie roughly into the car not a second later. 

It sends the brunette siphoner flying right on top of Hope, kneeing her in the crotch and banging their heads together. 

Hard. 

Hope groans and leans back, her hands automatically shooting out to rest on Josie’s hips. The brief stab of pain fades to nothing pretty quickly—thanks to Hope’s awesome tribrid abilities—but Josie continues to scrunch up her face and mutter apologies and nonsense underneath her breath. 

When reality sets in, they both freeze at the situation Lizzie has thrown them into. 

Without meaning to or even consciously thinking it, Hope has lifted Josie nearly two inches into the air, almost enough for the top of her head to hit the roof of the car. 

She holds the siphoner in place with those same two hands at her hips, her fingers digging tightly into the thin material of Josie’s shorts. And, if the way that they’re sitting isn’t already scandalous enough, Josie’s hands are placed delicately on Hope’s shoulders. 

If their eyes connect like lightning, she pretends not to notice. If her heart gives a phantom beat of thunder, she pretends not to notice. If the world turns to storm and rain around her, well, Hope Mikaelson does not notice at all.

For what feels like the longest time, neither of them move or speak. They stay completely still, and Hope absentmindedly wonders if she’s still breathing. Her throat feels strangely closed up, her head spins from lack of oxygen, her lungs rattle empty, so she imagines that she isn’t. 

Another unfamiliar feeling flutters in the spot where her heart should be, and for a second, Hope thinks it has stopped beating as well. 

Her thoughts are a frenzied litany of:

_Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck_ —

Josie blinks and it’s like a splash of cold water. 

Hope pulls her hands away and the siphoner scrambles off of her in a hurry, attempting to put as much space between them as possible. 

Only then can the tribrid breathe. 

“Did you have to push me like that?” Josie hisses at her sister, her cheeks bright red. Hope thinks that maybe her own are a similar color. 

“You were taking too long,” Lizzie says simply, as Josie sits down on top of her. The blonde does not look apologetic in the slightest. 

“Besides, it’s not like I forced you to mount her like a dog in heat,” she adds, and when Hope makes a choking noise at the back of her throat, she hopes dearly that neither of them hear it. “You did that all by yourself.” 

Hope rubs at her forehead tiredly and chooses to ignore the bickering twins, grabbing the duffel bag of snacks that had dropped during Josie’s fall and holding it protectively against her body. 

When the car door on her other side opens, Kaleb comes through the door first, followed by Jed. For some reason, the vampire lets out a weird, strangled noise when the werewolf makes himself comfortable on top of him.

Hope doesn’t particularly know what to think about that. 

MG takes his seat at the front, Alaric climbing in next to him, and then they’re on their way out of Mystic Falls. 

They haven’t even made it to the highway yet when Josie starts to massage her throat like she’s about to vomit. Lizzie takes one look at her and gags, which doesn’t help matters very much. 

“Your ass is bony, man.” Kaleb shifts underneath Jed for the fourth time that morning. The werewolf flushes at the edges of his cheeks, his jawline visibly ticking, but he doesn’t say a word. 

“You get used to it,” Lizzie tells the vampire from the left of Hope, rather unhelpfully. Josie pouts from on top of her sister. It seems that this isn’t the first time they’ve done this. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” the brunette asks. Hope can only be glad that the change in conversation is distracting Josie from her car sickness. Her face has even regained some of its natural color. 

It’s not distracting the tribrid very much herself, though. In fact, it’s only allowing her thoughts to wander into dangerous territory. 

Surely, Lizzie can’t mean that Josie has a flat ass or anything. It’s not like Hope has ever looked at it, so she wouldn’t know, of course, but...

Oh, _God_. Hope stops herself short. What is she thinking? 

No. She won’t think of the other girl in that way. They’re not even friends. They’re perfect strangers—acquaintances, at best. Hope might even be better friends with Alyssa Chang. 

Okay. Maybe she won’t go _that_ far. 

The problem is, Hope doesn’t really know. What do you call someone that you’ve known for years yet aren’t close to? 

No, that’s not completely right. Hope hasn’t known the other girl for years. She’s seen her for years, maybe. She’s been around her for years. 

Does she _know_ her? 

No. 

She doesn’t really know Josie Saltzman at all. 

She knows that Josie and Lizzie are sisters. She knows that she shares a Chemistry of Magic class with them. She knows that she’s caught herself staring at Josie in this class more times than once. She knows that she finds the way the siphoner chews thoughtfully at the end of her pencil during this class adorable. She knows that Josie doesn’t just do the chewing habit during class, but sometimes during lunch and dinner when she has free time to do her homework. She knows that Josie usually sits with MG and Lizzie at lunch and dinner. She knows that Josie never eats meat at lunch and dinner. 

Okay, so maybe Hope knows a little bit about Josie Saltzman. She only knows inconsequential things, though. It probably doesn’t matter to anyone else that the brunette chews the end of her pencil the way she does, or that she’s a vegetarian. 

So, no, Hope doesn’t know her _at all_. 

And, if the tribrid lets herself think about it, Josie is a bit out of her league. Hope imagines that if she searches up the word unattainable in a dictionary, she’ll find the siphoner’s picture underneath the definition. 

The sound of a police siren coaxes Hope out of her much-unwanted thoughts. She silently watches Alaric curse and look over his shoulder, pulling over to the side of the road with a rigid set to his spine. 

“Alright, nobody panic,” he says, even as he swats his hands at them to _be quiet_ and _make no sudden movements_. 

Hope doesn’t know how the man hadn’t seen this coming. There’s ten people in the car, four of whom are sharing seats and aren’t wearing seatbelts. This was incredibly illegal from the get-go. 

Thankfully enough, Alaric realizes that they have two vampires in the car. He simply asks MG to compel the officer to leave and then they’re on their way to the convention again. No harm done. 

Except for— _maybe_ —one (1) confused officer and three (3) bags of puke from Josie whose guilt at the whole situation makes her even more nauseous. 

They get pulled over by police at least three more times along the whole trip, and at least three more times, MG compels the officers to look the other way. 

Hope thinks that the whole thing is kind of funny, but everyone except Kaleb glares at her when she accidentally laughs out loud, so she keeps her thoughts to herself and just stares out the car window for the rest of the trip. 

If Josie just so happens to be in the way of Hope trying to stare out the window, well, the tribrid doesn’t particularly mind. 

—

Finally, after about twenty-five hundred miles of driving and about three days of having to be stuck around nine other not-quite humans, Hope catches her first glimpse of the hotel they’re staying at in San Diego. 

The group had stopped for gas, food, sleep, and other things nearly twenty times along the way—including the five times they had stopped for Josie so the girl could run out of the car and throw up on the side of the road. 

Yeah. They had run out of paper bags for her about halfway to their destination. Lizzie had also stopped rubbing her sister’s back soothingly and taking the time to put her hair up halfway through as well. 

“Wow, this place is nice.” Kaleb lets out a low whistle as he looks up at the luxurious skyscraper of a hotel. Hope has to agree. The building definitely looks much nicer than the three dingy motels the group had slept in in the past few days. 

“Thanks, girl,” he adds, glancing at Hope appreciatively as Alaric parks the car for the valet to take care of. Hope pales and tries to shake her head at the boy, but it’s too late—Lizzie has already heard him. 

“If _anyone_ should be thanked,” the blonde declares, a deep scowl on her face. “It should be my _dad_.” 

Hope rolls her eyes and watches for Alaric’s reaction. 

The man only grumbles something unintelligible and bang opens his car door, quickly slamming it behind him to drown out—what Hope imagines is—his annoying daughter. 

The rest of the group piles out of the vehicle soon after, with Kaleb and Jed going first. Hope follows next, helping Josie step out since Lizzie is taking too long to open the door on the twins’ side. 

She holds her hand out for the girl to take as she drops to the ground, placing another helping hand on the small of her back when the siphoner sways forward slightly. This only seems to infuriate Lizzie. 

“Paws off my sister!” she yells, still inside the car for whatever reason. Hope flushes and looks away, wondering why she was even trying to help Josie in the first place. 

The only reason she can think of is that it had become something of a habit since they had first left Mystic Falls. 

Josie was always nauseous from being in a car for so long, so Hope always tried to steady her when she finally got out. 

Lizzie just hadn’t noticed until now. 

“Does everyone have all their stuff?” Alaric asks, looking around. Hope pats the pocket of her jacket to check for her phone, and then nods along with everyone else. 

“Suitcases?” 

Alyssa holds up the small bag she had been carrying during the entire trip in emphasis. Alaric scans their surroundings one more time before zeroing his eyes in on the bag. 

“Okay, no one’s paying attention,” he murmurs, raising his eyebrows discreetly as if to say, _you know what to do_. 

Alyssa nods and picks out her own shrunken suitcase in the bag, placing it upright on the ground carefully. Satisfied, she then dumps out the rest of the suitcases in the bag thoughtlessly on the ground, uncaring that the small objects bounce up and down once or twice before laying still. 

“Hey, I had a limited-edition Green Lantern mug in there...” MG points out, but his voice weakly fades away as he loses his nerve. The boy closes his mouth, staring forlornly at the ground. 

It makes Hope kind of upset for him. 

Yet, she only narrows her eyes in irritation and decides not to speak up herself—if Lizzie Saltzman isn’t throwing a temper tantrum over the blatant mishandling of their luggage, Hope won’t either. 

Alyssa gives the group a fake smile before waving her hand and enlarging the suitcases back to their original sizes. Once everyone finds their own, Alaric leads them into the hotel. 

The hotel itself is spacious and lively. For how late at night it is, the first floor is beyond packed with people. Hope finds herself admiring the color scheme of the walls and flooring: a mix of golds, browns, and whites that complement the furniture quite well. 

“Alright, kids,” Alaric starts, with far more chirp than the time of day calls for. For God’s sake, it’s nearly midnight. “Wait in the lobby while Dorian and I check in and take care of everything...” 

He glances pointedly at the large common area with lounge seating. His gaze becomes pleading as he turns toward Ms. Tig. “Emma, could you, maybe, watch over them, please?” 

Ms. Tig nods with a small smile, which grows tight-lipped when Lizzie huffs and crosses her arms. Josie stands behind her, struggling to drag along both of their suitcases. 

“She’s our guidance counselor,” the blonde says, “not our babysitter.” 

Hope wonders what Lizzie has against Ms. Tig. For the entire length of the trip, the siphoner has been sending snide remarks and thinly-veiled insults the woman’s way. 

“For the purpose of the next few days,” Alaric tells Lizzie nicely, his smile and patience growing thin. “Miss Tig will act as your chaperone.” 

Through clenched teeth, still smiling, he adds, “Play nice, Lizzie.” 

“I’m going to the bathroom,” Josie says loudly, out of nowhere, suspiciously pressing her thighs together. Hope chuckles in spite of herself, but her laughter stops short in her throat when the brunette siphoner openly glares at her. 

Hmm. It looks like everyone’s in a mood. Hope understands why, though. They’ve been traveling for a while now. It would be great to get some rest before the first day of the convention tomorrow. 

“Lizzie, go with your sister,” Alaric tells the blonde, happy with the chance to get rid of her for a couple of minutes. 

“But—“ 

“ _Go_.” 

Lizzie’s shoulders sag, accepting her fate with more than a little reluctance. 

“MG,” she calls, following after her sister slowly. “Watch our suitcases.”

The second she even glances at him, the boy brightens up like a Christmas tree. He grins at Lizzie with something undeniably hopeful in his eyes. The light dims a second later when she stomps away and doesn’t spare him another look. 

Alaric sighs and walks towards one of the receptionists’ desk with Mr. Williams, talking in hushed whispers with the man. Hope takes the moment to help MG with the twins’ suitcases—God, why is Lizzie’s so _heavy_?—and follows Ms. Tig to the lounge. 

When they reach it, she sits down on a grey armchair, rummaging for the granola bar she thinks might be in her duffel bag. 

She’s fucking starving. 

She makes a pleased sound as her fingers curl around the bar, which turns into a groan of displeasure when she sees that it’s an oatmeal and raisin one. Yuck. 

Hope eats it anyways, looking around the hotel lobby to distract herself from the disgusting taste. Her eyes fall on what appears to be her headmaster arguing with the receptionist. 

The tribrid’s ears prickle to attention as she attempts to listen into the conversation with her supernatural hearing. 

“Hold on,” Alaric says, drawing his eyebrows together in confusion. “My friend reserved four doubles.” 

“Sorry, sir,” the receptionist apologizes, not looking terribly sorry. Hope smirks and glances away and back. “It says here that we only have two singles and two doubles available for you.” 

“We’re unusually busy this week,” she continues, trying to offer some sort of explanation. Hope imagines that the woman is dearly confused as to why they’re busy. It _is_ a secret supernatural convention, after all. “That could be why. Looking at the reservations, we’re completely overbooked.” 

She scrolls some on the computer in front of her, her face pale from the light on the screen. Alaric and Mr. Williams exchange a look while her attention is diverted. The receptionist then draws her head back up. “Actually, we have some suites open. Would you like to upgrade—“ 

“No, no,” Alaric cuts her off, swiping four keycards off the desk. “That’s fine, thank you.” 

Hope pretends that she hasn’t been eavesdropping in when the two men come back to the group, Lizzie and Josie trailing behind them from the bathroom. 

“So,” Alaric begins cheerfully, “we have two singles and two doubles!” 

Lizzie groans, whipping her head to glare at Hope like it’s her fault. 

“Thanks, _Hope_ ,” she snarks, parodying Kaleb’s words from earlier. The tribrid thinks it might be funny if she throws Lizzie’s words back at her as well. 

“Oh, no.” Hope shakes her head pleasantly, feeling petty. She mocks, “If anyone should be thanked, it should be your dad.” 

Josie lets out a snort that has her sister glaring at her in betrayal instead of Hope. The brunette instantly chokes on the sound and averts her gaze to the floor, which seems to satisfy Lizzie. 

“ _Ugh_.” The blonde throws herself unceremoniously on a couch, sprawling her limbs out like she isn’t sitting in a five star hotel. “Once again, Hope Mikaelson is ruining my summer vacation.” 

Hope raises her eyebrows to her hairline. 

“This isn’t a vacation, Lizzie...” Alaric starts to lecture, but Hope tunes him out when Jed nudges her with his elbow. Kaleb perks up nearby. 

“She knows we’re in the middle of spring, right?” Jed asks, slightly amused. 

“Homegirl is _de_ - _lus_ - _io_ - _nal_ ,” Kaleb says in a sing-song tone of voice, circling his finger around his temple in a cuckoo motion. Hope laughs. 

“Try sharing a motel room with her,” the tribrid chimes in, remembering the time in Alabama where she had only been able to put herself through an _hour_ of Lizzie’s nightly bedtime routine before she had just decided to sleep in the car for the rest of the trip. 

Kaleb and Jed give her matching looks of sympathy, all three of them turning to look at the siphoner in question, who takes that instant to speak. 

“Blah, blah, blah,” Lizzie cuts her father off, who had been rambling until now, rolling her eyes. “This is a school field trip, got it.” 

“Mhmm.” Alaric sighs, sorting through the keycards in his hand. He hands a single card to Ms. Tig and slips another in his pocket. “Emma and Dorian will share one single, I’ll take the other....” 

Oh. Hope had forgotten that Ms. Tig and Mr. Williams were dating. Well. That seems appropriate. 

“Girls, your room number is 329. Boys, you’re in 331,” Alaric goes on, handing Josie and Kaleb a keycard each. Unfortunately, Lizzie swipes the card out of Josie’s hand before her twin can even blink. Alaric chooses not to see that, though. “And please, no funny business.” 

He wags his finger at the group lamely, sending a meaningful glance between the boys and the girls. 

Hope doesn’t really know what he’s implying. Does he actually think that they’re going to sneak off to the boys’ room and have an orgy or something? 

Lizzie seems just as grossed out as the tribrid. 

“ _Not_ a problem,” the blonde says, looking the boys up and down with her nose scrunched up in disgust. MG and Jed scowl, but Kaleb just shrugs. 

With that, the students and adults split up to go to their separate rooms, with Lizzie leading the way to the elevators. Hope bites the inside of her cheek when she catches sight of Josie still struggling to pull two suitcases behind her. 

She hesitates for just a second before slowing down to offer help. 

“Here,” she reaches out, “let me.” 

“It’s okay,” Josie clips, her tone strangely curt. Hope frowns, but tries again. 

“Really, I can—“ 

“I got it.” 

Hope leans back, a bit stung. 

“Josie—“ 

“ _Fine_ ,” the brunette bites out, sounding exasperated. She stops pulling the suitcases and abruptly releases her hold on them, causing Hope to jump forward to make sure they don’t fall. 

When she finally manages to balance the luggage, she notices that the other girl is already storming away. She stares at Josie’s retreating form as the siphoner follows after her sister, feeling oddly hurt. 

What was _that_ for? Surely, Hope hadn’t deserved to be treated like that. Had she done something wrong without realizing it? 

She had thought that Josie and her were good, now. Over the length of the trip, the two have even started becoming, not friends, but friend _ly_. 

Whatever. It’s better that Hope squashes this—whatever _this_ is—down before it even starts. How could she have been so stupid as to think someone would want to be her friend? 

It’s no matter. Hope won’t be stupid again. 

Of course, that thought does nothing to untie the pit of knots in the tribrid’s stomach. 

Shaking her head, Hope sighs quietly and trails after everyone with the three suitcases dragging behind her and the single duffel bag slung over her shoulder. She closes in on the group just as they start to pile into the elevator. 

Hope takes one look at them and steps back. Nope. They’re definitely not all fitting in there. It would be better if she takes the stairs. Yup. They can’t all fit. No way. 

But, if she’s being honest, the tribrid is just making excuses for herself. She isn’t sure that she can stomach an awkward elevator ride with Lizzie Saltzman or her twin sister, who both appear to be very mad at Hope right now. 

Yes. She doesn’t think she’ll be able to stomach a thirty-second elevator ride at all. Especially if Lizzie keeps insulting her family and Josie keeps shooting daggers at her. 

“I think I’m gonna take the stairs,” Hope says, at last, her voice not as even as she would like it to be.

The tribrid twists her body back to the lobby, already walking away and not needing to hear a response. Lizzie gives her one. 

“Carrying three suitcases?” she yells after her, sticking her head out of the closing elevator doors. The tribrid doesn’t think the blonde would even care if not for the tiny fact that Hope is holding her luggage hostage. 

“Yup!” Hope calls back without turning around, her eyes already searching for a doorway to a stairwell. 

She finds one across the common area, by two plotted plants and an overhanging sign. 

She climbs the stairs very quickly, only getting mildly annoyed every time the wheels of Lizzie’s stubborn suitcase get stuck between the steps, or when the strap of her duffel bag around her neck chokes her. 

Only _mildly_ annoyed. 

Hope even convinces herself by the time she reaches the third floor that she’s enjoying the little work-out this gives her. Yup. She’s not annoyed. She’s just _enjoying_ the _exercise_. 

That’s it. 

Exercise gets her blood pumping, which reminds her of the feeling of running free as a wolf, with the ground beneath her feet and the moon’s light guiding her above her head. 

And nothing gets her blood pumping more than the adrenaline of trying to get to her hotel room before Lizzie Saltzman inevitably locks her out and refuses to open the door. 

It’s better this way. 

Hope hasn’t been able to wolf-out since they had crossed Texas’ borders and Alaric had let her run outside along the car. The area they’re in right now doesn’t have any woods, so this exercise is good for her. 

It’s not like she can wander the streets of San Diego as a wolf, anyways. 

Hope steps out of the stairwell, still pulling three suitcases behind her as she steps into a hallway. The first door on her right reads:

301.

Great.

The tribrid travels the length of the hall, her eyes periodically flashing between each door to make sure she hasn’t passed number 329. 

When she finally reaches their room, she automatically reaches for the door handle without thinking. It doesn’t budge an inch within her grip, and Hope steps back, scowling as she comes to a sudden realization. 

Fuck. 

Lizzie has the keycard. 

For a small second, Hope worries that the blonde is already inside the room and that she’ll have to sleep on the hallway floor tonight, but she doesn’t hear any sounds coming from behind the door. 

When she presses her ear up against it, only the gentle noise of air wafting into the room from the AC system greets her. Nothing else. 

That means that the rest of the group is still inside the elevator for whatever reason. Hope is fairly certain that it’s been a couple of minutes since she left them, so the fact that she got here before them is a little alarming. 

The tribrid huffs and moves the suitcases with her along the wall, leaning against it with her arms crossed as she waits for Lizzie to get here with the keycard. 

With each passing second, she finds herself glancing more and more at the door as she weighs the pros and cons of breaking her way in. 

Right when Hope is seriously thinking about blowing the hinges off the door or punching a hole through it, the elevator across the hall dinges open. 

Hope lets her arms fall to her sides and kicks off the wall as the group files out, half the members nearly shaking with anger and the other half muttering profanity. 

Hope is suddenly very glad that she hadn’t been on the elevator with them, if the way they’re all acting pissed-off right now is anything to go by. 

Yes. _Very_ glad. 

Lizzie shoves her way to the front, lifting the keycard pointedly into the air as if it gives her the right to push MG so hard that he nearly stumbles. He elbows Kaleb by accident, who retaliates by shoving him with two hands on his shoulders. 

“What took so long?” Hope asks, unable to keep the impatience out of her voice. Lizzie smiles sweetly as she collects her luggage nearby. 

“I hit the emergency switch just to spite you,” she says, like she knows exactly how to get on on Hope’s last nerve. 

The tribrid scoffs. “I knew it—“ 

“Oh, _please_ ,” Lizzie cuts her off, inserting the keycard into the slot on the door. A buzz and a green light signals that it’s now unlocked. “You’re too easy. Like I even care enough to be bothered.” 

With that, she adjusts the sunglasses on top of her head and stomps into the room, not caring to hold it open for the rest of the girls. 

Alyssa, right behind her, waves her wrist out and motions towards Jed and Kaleb. 

“Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dumber here thought that it’d be funny to press all the buttons on the elevator,” she explains, which promptly causes the hallway to erupt into arguing. The girl then follows Lizzie into their room before she can be pulled into the fight. 

“He started it!” Jed claims, throwing his hands up. Hope raises her eyebrows. 

“It was two buttons!” Kaleb sticks up two fingers. “ _Two_! Tell him, Hope.” 

Hope does _not_ tell him. 

The sound of their arguing voices become muted as Kaleb takes out his keycard and distractedly unlocks the door of the boy’s room. He walks inside teaching Jed how to count with MG just behind them. The three of them disappear quickly enough, leaving Josie and Hope out in the hallway alone. 

The brunette siphoner, perhaps coming to this realization at the same time as Hope, tries to escape as fast as possible. She jumps towards the door, towing her suitcase right behind her, but the tribrid’s hand shoots out to stop her.

Hope simply can’t help herself.

“You’re mad at me.” Not a question. “Why?”

Josie blushes, her gaze dropping to the fingers curled around her wrist. Hope follows her line of sight and hurriedly drops her hand, which only seems to make Josie’s blush darken. 

Weird. 

The siphoner looks away, eyebrows furrowing. “Think about it.” 

Damn. Hope had half-expected her to beat around the bush and not admit to it. Somehow, this is worse. 

“I—I have,” Hope stammers, a little flustered. Her mind swarms and blanks all at once. “I mean, I am.” 

Josie looks at her impassively, clearly waiting for a _real_ response. Hope tries to think about every single mistake she has made in the past few days, but she comes up with nothing. 

Her throat bobs as she meets Josie’s eyes, swallowing desperately to untie the knot forming in her throat. 

Why does she feel so _nervous_? And what is up with the nest of butterflies in her stomach right now? Hope fears that if she opens her mouth one might fly out. 

Josie sighs, done with waiting for some half-assed answer, and pushes forward to move past her. Hope flashes in front of the door before she can even try. 

“Wait.” 

Josie arches a single eyebrow expectantly. 

Again, nothing comes out. 

“Do you seriously not get it?” The siphoner crosses her arms over her chest, the pout of her bottom lip more noticeable the longer Hope stares at it. She forces herself to look away. “Or are you just that _delusional_?” 

_Delusional_. 

The emphasis she places on the word is so deliberate that Hope almost visibly cringes. Yet, a larger part of her is reassured. 

She can fix this.

Obviously, Josie doesn’t know that she, Kaleb, and Jed had been joking when they were talking about Lizzie being delusional. When the tribrid explains and clears everything up, it’ll all be fine. 

If not, Hope can just displace the blame onto Kaleb, since he was the one that had actually said it.

The tribrid had only _laughed_. She definitely doesn’t deserve Josie’s animosity for _that_. 

“Oh. Josie,” Hope breathes, nearly sighing in relief. “We didn’t mean it like that, I swear. We were just—“

“Just kidding?” Josie interrupts, not looking amused one bit. For some reason, Hope nods like an idiot. 

“I didn’t find it funny at all,” the siphoner tells her. “Lizzie isn’t some joke you can have a good laugh about with your buddies.” 

_With my buddies?_ Hope inwardly scoffs. Jed and Kaleb aren’t even her _friends_. It had been a _single_ conversation. 

“My sister doesn’t deserve that,” Josie continues, shaking her head. “She doesn’t deserve to be made fun of behind her back.” 

Oh, _really_? 

“She does it to me all the time,” Hope says, scowling. Is Josie so blind that she can’t see what’s right in front of her? 

The siphoner doesn’t respond, though. She only places a hand on Hope’s shoulder to move her away, and the tribrid lets herself be shoved to the side as Josie pushes the door open. She slams it behind her before Hope can follow or even blink. 

The second the door settles into its frame, the locks clicks in place, effectively shutting Hope out. 

She parts her lips, her shoulder burning in the place where Josie’s touch lingers. How funny, she thinks then, that it had been Josie to lock her out and not Lizzie. 

She takes about a minute or two to gather herself enough to swallow her pride and knock on the door. Thankfully, someone decides to spare her and Alyssa Chang appears on the other side. 

_Alyssa_ , who seems just as surprised as she is to see her. In fact, the girl even looks like she might be on her way out. 

“Aww.” Alyssa fake-pouts with fake-empathy. She balls her fists into fake-tears. “Did someone forget to bring the dog back in after potty-time?” 

Hope chooses not to dignify that with a response, instead giving Alyssa a fake-smile and gently bumping shoulders with her as she walks inside the room. 

Yelling immediately welcomes her. 

“Dibs!” 

“No, you always take a shower first!” 

“That’s because you always use all the hot water!” 

Lizzie and Josie stop arguing when they realize that they have an audience. Both Alyssa and Hope fix them with an unimpressed look. 

(The tribrid had been secretly hoping to take a shower first, but that obviously isn’t happening now.) 

“As fun as your trivial family drama is,” Alyssa drawls, leaning against the open door with her purse in one hand and the handle of her suitcase in the other. “I’m leaving.” 

“What do you mean you’re _leaving_?” Lizzie asks, scrunching her face up. “You can’t do that.” 

Alyssa ignores her, stepping forward and turning her back on them. “Bye, girlies. I’ll be in the boys’ room.” 

“Why are you taking all of your stuff?” The blonde is not having any of this. 

Alyssa sighs, twisting her body back around with annoyance written clear across her face. 

“Why _not_?” 

Lizzie splutters as Alyssa keeps walking away, but then the witch does something weird. 

She stops just past the doorframe, as if suddenly remembering something. “Oh, and don’t forget to use the bathroom before lights out, Lizbear. Wouldn’t want you to have another little accident, would we?” 

Hope raises her eyebrows. Had Lizzie wet the bed at one of their last motels? 

She lets out a snort before she can help herself. This seems to spur Alyssa on, because she then places her attention on Hope. The witch grins, and Hope’s laughter gets stuck in her throat. 

“Goodnight. Sleep tight,” Alyssa coos, glancing towards Josie and Lizzie for the last part. “Don’t let the tribrid bite.” 

Hope wrinkles her nose, unable to keep the frown off her face no matter how much she tries. Especially when Alyssa shuts the door before she can deliver a clever retort. 

“I don’t think she’s coming back,” Josie says, her voice small. Hope hums in agreement, taking the silence that follows to look around their hotel room. 

The first thing she notices is that it’s very luxurious, just like the first floor’s lounge area had been. There’s even a small kitchen equipped with a fridge, stove, microwave, and coffee machine. Hope eyes the last item for a good second, before she casts her gaze somewhere else.

Through a door on the right she can just barely make out a bathroom, which seems to have both a shower and a large tub, and then there’s also a small study area with a desk. Two king-sized beds with white duvets sit in the middle of the room, with a golden chandelier hanging in between them. 

Looking up at it, the tribrid catches a strange reflection of light hitting off the chandelier, which she realizes is coming from the two huge panels of mirrors above the beds on the ceiling. 

Speaking of the beds, Hope cannot wait to go to sleep in one. She is absolutely exhausted. 

Not bothering with the shower, Hope moves towards the bed on the far left, dropping her duffel bag on top of it and then face planting into a pillow. 

God. Even the _pillow_ feels amazing. Hope sighs, perfectly content for the first time in days, but Lizzie Saltzman chooses to ruin that within seconds. 

She pokes Hope in the back, who gives a sleepy groan. Her voice comes out muffled from the pillow. “What?” 

“You’re sleeping on the floor,” Lizzie tells her. 

That makes Hope get up very quickly. 

She props herself on her elbows until she has the leverage to turn on her back.When their eyes finally meet, the tribrid sends the blonde an obvious glare. 

“There’s two beds,” Hope deadpans. Her eyes then flit over to Josie, who is standing near the door with her bottom lip shyly pulled between her teeth. “You two can share one.” 

“I don’t think so, Mikaelson.” Lizzie actually pulls her off the fucking bed by her arm. Hope allows it to happen for the sole reason that she doesn’t want to start a fight at nearly one in the morning. 

“Okay.” Hope grabs her duffel bag and reaches for a pillow to rest her head on for the floor, but Lizzie stops her again. 

“No.” 

“What _now_?” Hope snaps. Is Lizzie seriously expecting her to sleep on the floor without a blanket or pillow? 

“You can’t take a pillow,” Lizzie says simply. 

“Why not?”

“My sister and I need them.”

“All _ten_ of them?” 

“Yes.” 

“Fine.” Hope clenches her teeth, sounding more than a little childish. She swipes her hand out towards the complimentary piece of candy the hotel left on the bed and snatches it. 

“But I’m taking the chocolate.” She then holds the candy up in triumph, as if she’s just won one over the other girl. The tribrid is still hungry; the granola bar had not been nearly enough to sate her.

She ends up giving the chocolate to Josie when she hears Josie’s stomach growl a few minutes later, since Hope can’t quite resist the pout on the siphoner’s lips despite Josie not outright asking for it. 

She also ends up having to call room service for an extra pillow and blanket. When they finally show up outside the door after half an hour, the woman that greets Hope quickly informs her that the hotel has just ran out of blankets. Instead, the woman offers her a pool towel. 

“I’m sorry, Miss. We are unusually busy this week,” she says. The words strike Hope as oddly familiar, but she shakes them off easily enough. “I’ll let you know when some become available, if you want?” 

Hope takes the towel, silently fuming, and shakes her head with a tight-lipped smile. “Don’t worry about it.” 

She shuts the door in the woman’s face without even feeling bad, spinning around to shoot daggers at Lizzie, who is conveniently snuggled up alone in the middle of her king-sized bed with five pillows surrounding her like a fort. The blonde is even wearing a silk sleeping mask. 

Josie is still awake—but barely—sitting up with her bedside lamp on and a book in her lap, smushed into the far right corner of her own bed. Hope briefly wonders why, since it’s not like the girl has to share it with anyone else.

And certainly not _Hope_. 

The tribrid watches as Josie yawns and lulls her head back farther onto the pillow it’s resting on. It’s a wonder that the brunette hasn’t caught her staring yet, but perhaps her eyes are far too heavy-lidded to see Hope being a creep underneath the lashes of them. 

And Josie’s _eyelashes_. 

They fan out across the soft curves of her cheekbones like tiny, little butterfly wings, and that same phantom feeling from earlier stirs in Hope’s stomach again like a chain reaction. 

Is Josie asleep? Is that what it is, when her heart rate evens out along with her breathing pattern? Is that what it is, when her lips part so softly that Hope—for all her tribrid abilities—can’t even hear the skin separate? 

Keeping her steps purposely light, she sneaks around the edge of the bed to turn off the lamp for Josie. She then picks up the book as quietly as she can and closes it, placing it next to the lamp. 

Her silent efforts go in vain, since Josie is decidedly _not_ asleep. 

The siphoner blinks her eyes open slowly, which go wide in surprise when they fall on Hope. The tribrid bites the inside of her cheek to stop herself from blurting out something possibly romantic about Josie’s eyelashes.

Well, not _romantic_ , because Josie and her aren’t like that. They’re not even friends, really. At least, that’s what Hope reminds herself in that moment. 

When the brunette opens her mouth, Hope is quick to stop her. It would be an absolute nightmare if they were to disrupt Lizzie’s beauty sleep. 

“Shh, Jo,” she whispers, the nickname slipping out of her mouth before she can stop herself. She curses inwardly, hoping that the other girl won’t remember in the morning. 

“Wait,” Josie calls her back before she even move away to the bed she’s made on the floor. Hope tells herself that she listens only to satisfy her curiosity. 

The brunette then tilts her head almost imperceptibly towards the bed, like an invitation. Hope swallows thickly. “Do you want to...?” 

Lizzie’s voice perks up from the other side of the room. “Don’t even think about it.” 

Hope rolls her eyes and shares a small smile with a sleepy Josie, who is probably too tired to keep up the act of being mad at her. Whatever. She’ll take whatever she can get. 

Somewhere between Lizzie kicking her out of the bed and the tribrid laying on the ground with a thin pillow under her head and a pool towel draped over her, Hope somehow falls asleep. 

“Hope...” 

She wakes up to someone gently prodding her, drifting the pads of their fingers along her forearm like the light breeze of a wind. The tribrid sits up and rubs at her eyes, which automatically adjust in the darkness. 

Her pupils instantly dilate at the person in front of her. 

“Josie?” Her voice sounds unbelievably deep and husky to her own hears, but Josie doesn’t seem to care. She only leans back from where she had been kneeling to hover over Hope. “What time is it?” 

The siphoner doesn’t give her a straight answer. 

“We have a couple of hours,” she only says, voice low and soft. For some reason, it makes Hope’s mouth run dry. “Lizzie’s asleep. I just thought—well, I thought I should ask if you maybe wanted to, I don’t know, share the bed?” 

Right. Lizzie can’t stop Hope from spending her night in a bed when she’s asleep in the next one over. 

As if to punctuate Josie’s words and emphasize her point, the sound of light snoring begins to fill the room. The tribrid glances over suspiciously. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be angry with me?” she asks, eyebrows drawn together, but inside she’s nearly sighing in relief. 

The scratchy fabric of the towel she had been using as a blanket had made her skin crawl. The pillow on the floor had not made her feel much better. 

“I still am,” Josie tells her, “but I’m also mad at Lizzie. She had no right to make you sleep on the floor like that.” 

_Hmm_. Maybe Josie isn’t so blind when it comes to her sister. 

“And,” she adds, and Hope can just barely make out the start of a blush rising at the very edges of her cheeks. “The chocolate you gave me tasted really, really good.” 

“Oh, so you only forgave me for my chocolate?” Hope teases, standing up from her make-shift bed on the floor as she follows the other girl to the actual bed. 

“Maybe,” Josie shoots back, in the same tone of voice, the smile on her lips almost secret. It makes Hope feel breathless and full of air all at once. 

Hope watches as the brunette pulls the duvet cover up just enough that they can both slip in easily, with Josie on the right and Hope on the left side of the bed. 

The tribrid immediately buries herself into the impossibly fluffy blankets, letting out a small, happy noise at the back of her throat. 

She then shifts her shoulders to sink more firmly into the pillow beneath her head, suddenly all-too attuned to the position of Josie’s body right next to her own. 

A respectable amount of distance remains between them, enough that either girl could probably move around quite a bit and not brush up against the other. 

Yet, Hope continues to stay almost uncomfortably frozen, a stone statue, staring at herself in the mirror on the ceiling. She finds that her hair is a bit tangled from sleeping on the floor, the collar of her shirt pushed low on one side and much higher on the other. 

A flash of movement catches Hope’s eye and the tribrid accidentally locks her gaze right onto Josie’s through the mirror, who had just turned from her side to lay on her back. 

There’s a moment, there, where Hope holds her breath and pretends that she _hadn’t_ just felt a shiver run down her spine like a jolt of electricity. In that same moment, she also pretends that the skin of her neck hadn’t just erupted into thousands of tiny, little goosebumps. 

“Goodnight, Hope,” Josie says, voice fainter than the tribrid had ever heard it before, and it reaches Hope’s ears as if it had been whispered right next to her and miles away all the same. 

“Goodnight, Josie,” she returns, a little stiffly, hoping that the other girl can’t hear the sudden lump of emotion in her throat. She must not, because she only turns back on her side and closes her eyes. 

The brunette’s breathing evens out within minutes, but Hope remains still and shivering, the skin along her back anxious and restless. She tries to relax back into the sheets, looking for any sort of warmth or heat, but she finds that they have turned colder than she can remember. 

Wanting to be comfortable, Hope twists and turns her body around within the blankets, but her eyes continue to fall back to that same, unforgiving reflection above her. 

She finds herself staring at Josie more times than not. She tries to tell herself this feeling inside of her is _not_ weird—

This feeling of ice and fire, like she is being drowned and burned alive all at once, this feeling of—

No. It’s not weird. She just isn’t used to the feeling yet. 

She’s simply... _not used to it._

Not used to being so close to Josie that she can feel the body heat radiating off of her like a Siren’s spell. Not used to being so close that she could reach out a foot away and touch her. Not used to being so close that she can smell the fragrance of her perfume, something sweet but dangerously intoxicating—or was that just the scent of her shampoo? 

Fuck. Hope’s being silly. She can’t allow her mind to wander off like this. No. She can’t. 

The tribrid swallows thickly at the attempt to shake away her lingering thoughts, coughing when the harsh sting of venom hits her throat. She rubs at the flesh of her neck, taken by complete surprise when the sharp points of her canines poke dig into her lips. 

One glance up at the mirror on the ceiling is confirmation enough that the familiar yellow of her wolf’s eyes have started to leak into her vision. 

Hope spends the rest of the night staring up at her reflection, hungry and yearning, wishing she could summon the courage to turn on her side and stare at Josie through the gold of her eyes. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the late update :) thanks to the person who messaged me on twitter, i honestly forgot about it

During the entire fifteen minutes it takes the group to drive to the convention, MG plays “California Gurls” in the car on repeat. He manages to play the song three complete times before Hope lunges over the console and cuts the volume off. 

It’s nearly nine o’clock in the morning, so, no, the tribrid really isn’t in the mood to listen to Katy Perry and Snoop Dog singing about laying underneath palm trees and getting freaky in a Jeep or whatever. 

(The sound of Lizzie and Josie obscenely moaning during the rap part isn’t something she can sanely hear again either.)

The parking lot is all but full when they pull into the convention center—a large, white building that appears to be deceptively empty and abandoned. 

It directly contrasts the crowded parking lot, which is probably due to the number of disillusionment and non-supernatural-repelling spells Alaric had told Hope were placed around the perimeter for their safety. 

There’s also an underground parking lot below the convention building, which the tribrid guesses is for vampires without daylight rings. 

The group piles out of the car the second Alaric hits the brakes, with the exception of Mr. Williams and Ms. Tig, who had opted to stay at the hotel for whatever reason. Hope can faintly remember Alaric mentioning something about Ms. Tig catching sight of a flying spider and not letting her boyfriend leave until it was gone for good. 

Whatever. At least everyone hadn’t had to share seats anymore. 

“Lots of windows,” MG notes, as they all approach the building. Hope frowns and looks around, automatically scanning their surroundings for trouble. Yet, everything just looks...empty. “Isn’t that kind of...?” 

“Dangerous?” Alaric finishes for the boy, quirking up a knowing smile. “They’re all double-paned, tinted, and tempered—meaning, UV rays can’t penetrate them.” 

“Perfectly safe for vampires,” he adds, lowering his voice with a small smirk. “Even if you and Kaleb weren’t already wearing your daylight rings.” 

Hope rolls her eyes. “Do we even know if we’re at the right place?” 

She gestures out to the whole lot of nothingness in front of them, arching a single eyebrow pointedly. “There’s no one here.” 

Her doubt is short-lived. 

The moment that they step onto the curb of cement that separates the building from the street, the world around Hope shifts. 

A brief wave of nausea washes over the tribrid, where she feels like she is being squeezed through a very, very thin straw and spat out with half of her blood volume drained.

Then, suddenly and without mercy, an array of different colors and sounds explode across her senses. 

Hope stumbles forward and loses her footing, even as she recognizes the familiar feelings and sensations that come from crossing a magical protective barrier. 

Thankfully, she catches herself quickly enough to be spared from the embarrassment of falling, which she can’t say the same of for some of the other members of her party. 

For example, Josie and Lizzie—most likely feeling double the nausea through their twin bond—bump into each other and topple to the ground. The only reason they don’t hit the cement is because their father is there to catch them. 

Jed somehow manages to sock Kaleb in the throat, who actually does hit the cement. MG, well-meaning and always the supportive friend, bends down to help him. Unfortunately, blood rushes to all of the wrong places, making him dizzy and sending him right on top of Kaleb. 

Weirdly enough, Alyssa is the only one that seems to be unaffected. She just crosses her arms, inspecting her nails with a half-bored, half-irked expression on her face. 

Hope recovers second to the witch, darting her eyes around to take everything in. The first thing she notices are the people. They all look...normal. 

While they vary from age to age, many of them look like Hope. Not outwardly dangerous. Not...evil. 

_Normal_. 

They look _normal_. 

It’s the little things that distinguish them from non-supernaturals—like the distinct color of lapis lazuli in daylight rings, the talismans and amulets she can just barely glimpse underneath shirts and around necks, the glowing gold eyes and pack tattoos. 

Almost as if to remind her of her own pack, Hope’s faded Crescent mark begins to itch underneath her shirt. 

The tribrid rubs absentmindedly at the back her shoulder as she stretches her limbs out, twisting her body around and bouncing on her heels to see more over Alaric’s big-ass head. 

Past him, Hope finds several food trucks and carts lined up at the entrance of the building, with dozens of people lined up in front of them. 

She notes one particular truck selling blood bags with all different kinds of blood types—O, AB, A, B—and in all different kinds of temperatures—warm, cold, hot. On the front of the truck is a large advertisement promoting a special blood type called Rh-null. 

The slogan reads: 

“Golden blood. Tastes like liquid gold. And blood.” 

Not very creative. 

Hope’s eyes linger on another truck, which is selling sweets and baking goods. Hmm. She might have to come back to that one later. 

Now that the tribrid thinks about it, she _is_ kind of hungry. Everyone had woken up late, so the group hadn’t had time to eat at the hotel’s breakfast buffet. 

A shame, really. 

Speaking of waking up late...

A part of Hope is still ignoring the small fact that she had woken up with Josie sprawled out on top of her, the girl’s breath puffing so hotly against Hope’s pulse point that she could have sworn her heart had stopped beating in that moment. 

The tribrid had tried to push Josie off of her as gently as she could, but the siphoner had refused to budge for what felt like an entire hour, and Hope had struggled to breathe evenly and control herself for just as long. 

Thank God, that Josie had ended up waking a mere second before her own sister, which was only to push Hope off of her and onto the floor before Lizzie could see them sharing the bed. 

Yay. 

“Kaleb, come back here,” Alaric hisses loudly, out of nowhere, tilting his head with narrowed eyes and even wagging his finger.

Hope blinks quickly to distract from her thoughts. Her gaze instantly falls on Kaleb, who is standing in the line for the blood food truck. 

“ _Kaleb_...” Alaric warns once again, when the vampire pretends not to hear him. 

Kaleb rolls his eyes but listens and steps out of the line. 

When they finally enter the building, the inside is way more crowded and packed than it had been outside. There are seemingly hundreds of booths and tables set up, with just as many people cramming the space around them.

Alaric leads them to the check-in center at the front, where two men and women are giving people wristbands and lanyards to identify them. 

The line for it is a little too long for Hope’s thinning patience, but it’s not like she can complain without looking like a petulant toddler, so she says nothing at all. Everyone else is doing the same, looking around to distract themselves or making poor attempts at small talk. 

After a few minutes of waiting, Hope thinks that something has caught Jed’s eye, since he strays from the line and tries to take off on his own towards...a vendor selling moonlight amulets? 

Lizzie slaps his hand and pulls him back. 

“Those are obviously fake,” she says, huffing slightly. “Could you be any more gullible?” 

“Could you be any more...um...mean?” Jed retorts lamely, his cheeks burning. For an alpha, he doesn’t like making eye contact very much. 

Wait. 

Is he actually intimidated by Lizzie Saltzman? Ew. 

Jed lowers his voice, muttering, “I just wanted to check it out.” 

Hope throws the boy a sympathetic glance, feeling a little bit bad for him. _Of course_ , an amulet that allows him to control his transformation as a wolf would be something he wants to check out. 

“Well, I just wanted a nice spring getaway—“

“Lizzie,” Alaric cuts the blonde off quickly, giving her a stern look. He steps out of line and beckons her to follow him. “Come with me.” 

“What? Why?” 

He doesn’t respond, instead looking over the group of students. “Josie, you’re in charge of getting everyone checked in.” Hope raises her eyebrows as Lizzie drops open her mouth dramatically. “Your sister and I will be just outside at the breakfast cart we saw on our way in.” 

“But Dad—“ 

“Won’t we, sweetie?” Alaric quirks up a pained smile, which Lizzie forces on her own lips with a great amount of reluctance. Jed snickers quietly. 

“Yes,” the siphoner grits out, through clenched teeth and a fake, syrupy smile. The pair start to walk away, but Kaleb calls after Alaric. 

“Hey, Dr. S, get me something good!” he says, cupping one hand on the side of his mouth to make his voice heard. Alaric frowns, cocking his head to the side. 

“What would you like?” he asks. 

“Two pints of O neg?” Kaleb smiles hopefully, putting two thumbs up. 

“Nice try.” Alaric shakes his head with an indulgent smile. “I’ll be right back with your egg sandwich.” 

Kaleb narrows his eyebrows and juts out his bottom lip in a pout as his headmaster leaves. He mutters, almost to himself, “Man, I hate eggs.” 

Hope ignores that and moves up a spot in line, nodding distractedly along to whatever MG is talking about next to her. She thinks it might be something about superheroes, but she’s not completely sure. 

(She’s also not sure why he’s even starting a conversation with her to begin with.) 

It’s not five minutes later that the tribrid feels something soft shoving against her back, and she turns around just to catch Josie’s shoulders as the siphoner trips into her. 

“Watch where you’re going, sweetheart,” some random guy chuckles out, a single corner of his lips pulled into a nasty smirk. “Or at least say sorry.” 

Hope doesn’t immediately recognize him, but she thinks that he’s maybe one of the werewolves that had been waiting behind them in line with his pack. 

She gives herself a second to take him in, from his smug smile to his bushy eyebrows. He looks...far too happy with himself. 

Is he the man that had just pushed Josie? 

And _sweetheart_? Who the hell is he calling _sweetheart_? 

Hope makes sure that Josie is okay and steady before stepping in front of the brunette to face the guy, a dangerous growl rumbling inside her chest. 

If her eyes glow gold—well, it’s not like she has to hide it.

“You pushed her,” she bites out, standing up straighter and keeping her chin raised high. “ _You_ apologize, _sweetheart_.”

At her words, his eyes instantly reflect the yellow in her own, and she watches him as he discreetly flexes the muscles of his hairy arms, as if trying to intimidate her. 

“No.” 

Hope arches a single eyebrow, not budging an inch even as Josie tries to tug her back by her arm. 

If she tries hard enough, Hope thinks that she might be able to turn the man to dust with just her eyes. 

She keeps glaring at him while he glares back at her, the two really only scouting each other out and weighing the other one over. After a long moment, Hope carefully places a deliberate smirk on her face and looks to the slightly shorter boy standing next to him. 

She tilts her head to the side, unimpressed, asking, “ _This_ is your alpha?” 

The boy doesn’t even look her in the eye, visibly shaking in anger as he keeps his gaze to the ground shyly. No one else speaks up, so the tribrid is pretty sure that the man that had pushed Josie is the alpha of their pack. 

She turns back to look at him, finding that his expression has hardened in the mere seconds she’s taken her eyes off him. He looks undeniably angry at her questioning his position in the pack. 

Good. 

His anger will only make him foolish. 

“Don’t make me repeat myself,” Hope says, still smiling, but her eyes are doing something different. She doesn’t think they’ve ever been quite this dark and bright all at once. She can almost see the bits of gold leaking into her vision like shadowed sunshine. 

His lip curls into a sneer as he all but snarls at her, but she doesn’t falter, just staring back at him with a faintly disinterested look. It makes the man pause. 

He looks at her, then, like really looks at her, as if searching for a weakness or a flaw he can point out. 

Whatever he must have been looking for, he doesn’t find it, because he lowers his head and takes a slow step back. 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, thinning his lips into a straight line. He glances off to Josie in apology, before dropping his chin to his chest and his eyes to the floor. 

“NEXT!” 

Hope smirks and lets Josie angrily pull her away by her wrist, satisfied. 

As Josie drags her off to get their group checked-in, the tribrid catches a short glimpse of MG and Kaleb puffing their chests out at the man and taunting him. 

“Hey, did you see that, KH?” MG grins. 

“What, MG?” Kaleb feigns ignorance, but his lips are stretched wide, too. “You mean Big Bear here getting intimidated by a five-foot-two, sixteen-year-old girl?” 

_Five-foot-three_ , Hope corrects in the privacy of her own mind, but she shakes her head in silent laughter all the same. Josie doesn’t find it as funny, merely huffing and rolling her eyes. 

The siphoner’s attitude disappears completely as she and Hope come to a stand in front of the check-in desk, with their friends trailing behind them. Josie even attempts a sweet smile as she approaches the woman that had called them forward seconds ago. 

“Hi,” she says, her voice a little higher than it usually is. Hope raises her eyebrows. “We’re here for the...” 

She looks pointedly around, waving her hand to gesture in place for the words that don’t come. The woman doesn’t blink, simply staring at the siphoner and waiting. 

“Um...convention...” Josie finishes, awkwardly, moving a strand of hair out of her face. The sarcastic asshole in Hope makes an appearance. 

“Oh, really?” She leans forward to whisper right behind Josie’s ear, causing the other girl to jump about a foot in the air and make an odd squealing sound. 

She pushes Hope away from her, blushing from her neck to the tips of her ears. Hope doesn’t exactly know why, but she raises her hands in surrender and backs off all the same. 

“Last name?” the woman asks in a drone, like a robot. Hope narrows her eyes. The woman seems almost... _human_. Had she been compelled to be here or something? 

“Saltzman,” Josie tells her, easily enough. The woman looks down at her device and begins to scroll on the screen, eyes squinting. Yup. Definitely human. 

“I’m sorry,” she says after a moment, in that same monotone voice, when she’s done scrolling and finally looks back up. “I’m afraid I don’t have anything under that name.” 

Huh. That’s weird. 

Josie turns her head on her shoulder to look at Hope with a puzzled expression on her face, who just shrugs, before she turns away again. 

“Maybe we could try your first name?” the woman suggests, and Josie smiles again, obviously relieved. 

“Josie,” she says. The smile slips off her face a second later. 

“Sorry,” the woman apologizes once more, not sounding very sorry. “Nothing is coming up for that either.” 

“Oh,” Josie breathes, drumming the cheap wood of the desk with her fingers almost...anxiously...as she glances back outside to where her father and sister are. She looks a bit like a kid that’s been left by their mom to pay for the groceries without money. 

Not thinking, Hope reaches out with her hand and curls her fingers around the edge of the desk, right on top of Josie’s. The effect is instantaneous. 

Immediately, the siphoner’s fingers still like stone. Hope thinks that it sounds like Josie has even stopped breathing, but she isn’t completely sure. 

Fuck. The tribrid doesn’t know why she had done that. Why she had decided to touch Josie so—

So publicly. 

The intense, deep urge to comfort the other girl had barely registered in her mind, and she hadn’t even noticed that the impulse was there until right after she had acted on it. 

Hope only takes about a second to revel in the soft warmth of Josie’s fingers beneath hers, before she shakes the feeling off and leans over the siphoner’s shoulder. 

“Okay,” she murmurs thoughtfully, brows furrowed as she meets the woman’s scarily-blank eyes. Yup. Human and compelled. “Can you try Mikaelson?” 

The woman asks Hope to spell it out for her. Hope does. Within a second or two, she clicks something on her screen and looks up quickly. 

“Oh, yes.” The woman smiles, just the bare corners of her lips rising in a rather unsettling, disturbing expression. “I have a Hope Mikaelson, and a—“ 

She cuts herself off, eyes darting to Josie. She cocks her head to the side curiously and asks, “Was Josie a nickname by any chance?” 

“Uh,” Josie starts. She glances off to Hope, before nodding. The siphoner admits shyly, “Yes, actually. My full name is Joset—“

“Josette?” The woman interrupts, fishing out some colored lanyards and stickers with names on them from the desk. “Josette Mikaelson?” 

Hope’s face loses all color. Josie’s own turns into a fucking rainbow. Her fingers twitch underneath the tribrid’s. 

Behind them, Alyssa starts to cackle evilly. Hope and Josie both ignore her. 

Hope leans over the desk, lowering her voice. She hopes that it comes out as even as she wants it to be when she says, “I’m sorry. There’s been a terrible mistake—“ 

Josie elbows her in the side, plastering on a fake smile. Hope whips her head towards her with a dirty look, eyes narrowing when Josie giggles out, “Yup. That’s me.” 

“Great! I can see it all clearly now,” the woman says, scrolling through her device again. Her eyes flash to Hope for just a second. “The rest of your pack is coming up...let’s see...Alaric, Alyssa, Dorian, Elizabeth, Emma, Jed, Kaleb, and Milton?” 

Hope’s mouth runs dry. “My pack?” 

“Yes.” The woman smiles widely. “Although you might not all be werewolves, we at SDSC are proud to acknowledge the non-Lycan members of a pack.” 

Hope’s face contorts into surprise. Maybe this woman hadn’t been compelled by a vampire or something. She whispers, needlessly, “You know what werewolves are?” 

“I beg your pardon?” The woman scrunches up her nose, confused. For the life of her, Hope can’t tell if she’s pretending or not. “Werewolves aren’t real.”

Hope chuckles nervously, realizing that the woman isn’t putting up an act at all. Whoever had compelled her hadn’t done a great job. Or, maybe they had done too good of one. 

“No, no,” the tribrid agrees in a rush, Josie shaking quietly with laughter next to her. “Of course not.” 

“Alrighty then.” The woman moves on quickly, handing over a fistful of red and white pieces of thin paper to Josie. “Here are ten wristbands. These are your tickets into the convention, please put them on as soon as possible. And...” 

She trails off, peeling stickers with writing onto the lanyards she had been holding earlier, at random. Hope has to resist a pout when she sees that the woman puts a sticker with her name on it on a yellow lanyard. 

(She had _really_ wanted the black one.)

“These are your complimentary lanyards for selecting the premium package,” the woman says finally, giving them over to Hope, since Josie still has her hands full. The two girls exchange a look of surprise at the word _premium_.

“Thank you for coming. We hope you have a wonderful experience.” Yay. There’s that robot voice again. “And Miss Mikaelson,” the woman adds, “we’re so happy you could make it.” 

Hope pauses, forgetting—just for a second—that she’s scheduled to answer a series of random questions in the lecture hall at three o’clock in the afternoon tomorrow. 

Fuck. 

She hasn’t done anything to prepare. 

How does one prepare for that? Should she write a speech on some notecards or something? Damn it. 

Sensing the clear dismissal, Josie and Hope thank the woman and step out of line. The siphoner starts giving the rest of the group their wristbands, while the tribrid sorts through the names on the lanyards to hand them out. 

When she gives Kaleb his purple one, it makes him a little more excited than she expected it to. 

“Kaleb Mikaelson,” he reads. Correction: practically sings. He smacks MG to get his attention. “Has a ring to it, don’t it? 

Hope rolls her eyes as MG nods distractedly, grinning at his own green lanyard, which reads Milton Mikaelson. 

Alyssa and Jed both get pink lanyards, while Josie gets some sort of navy-blue that has her shooting jealous looks at Hope’s own yellow one. For her part, Hope almost peels off the sticker of Lizzie’s black lanyard so she can switch their names and have it to herself. 

Well. Almost. The important thing to remember is that she doesn’t. 

Lizzie and Alaric come back from outside after a minute or two, with the former carrying some kind of fruity drink and the latter carrying a bag of food. Hope sniffs and smells eggs and bacon. 

A few feet away, where Kaleb is helping Jed put on his wristband, the vampire wrinkles his own nose and sighs. He really must not like eggs. 

Josie hands her father and sister their separate lanyards and promptly leaves, as if already knowing that Lizzie is about to throw a temper tantrum the moment she sees her name next to the word Mikaelson. 

Predictably, she does. 

“Daddy, there’s been a terrible mistake,” the blonde says, placing a hand over her heart dramatically. 

“Hey, that’s what I said.” Hope smirks, just a tad, but it only seems to infuriate Lizzie, who starts waving her hands in front of her face like she’s hyperventilating. 

Alaric looks down at his own lanyard, before staring off into the distance and muttering quietly, “This is my worst nightmare.” 

“Excuse me?” Hope perks up, trying for innocent, but the smile on her lips is a little too smug to pull it off. 

“Oh,” Alaric waves her off, chuckling nervously. “Nothing. Nothing.” 

“Dad’s friend must have registered us underneath Hope’s name, Lizzie, it’s not a big deal,” Josie explains, and Hope hadn’t realized that she and Lizzie were still arguing. 

“Not a big deal?” Lizzie glares at her sister. “Maybe not for you, _traitor_.”

She pulls Josie forward by the lanyard on her neck, reading the sticker. “Aww, Josette Mikaelson.” 

Josie tries to bat her sister’s hand off the lanyard, catching the nasty, sickly-sweet grin on her face from miles away. 

Lizzie lowers her voice to a loud whisper that everyone can hear. She smiles through clenched teeth. “If they had dotted the I with a heart, it would have been exactly what you used to doodle in your diary. Over and over and over—“ 

Josie blushes and finally tugs the lanyard out of her sister’s grip, face redder than Hope has ever seen before. 

The tribrid’s mind runs in desperate circles, wondering what the hell _that_ means. 

Any of this means. 

Does that mean Josie likes her? Like, like-likes her? But then again, Lizzie had said _used to_ , so maybe the feelings were in the past? 

Hope’s stomach twists just thinking about it. 

“Lizzie!” Josie hisses, clearly embarrassed. “How could you?” 

“Okay, that’s enough,” Alaric interrupts. He doesn’t look very impressed with the both of his daughters. He turns to everyone else, who don’t look very impressed either. Lizzie keeps mumbling underneath her breath but her sister stays quiet. 

“Thank you, Josie,” their father says pointedly, “for knowing when to stop. You know, Lizzie, you could take a page out of her book.” 

“I think you mean her diary—“ 

“Lizzie!” 

“I said that’s enough!” Alaric snaps, loudly enough that a few people around the group glance in their direction. Lizzie and Josie look down at their feet in shame. Hope palms her forehead and winces. “Now, we have a couple of hours before the important events start. Why don’t you all wander around and do some exploring?” 

Some nods and murmurs of agreement. 

“And we’ll meet back here for lunch around noon?” the man adds. 

More nods and murmurs of agreement. 

Hope doesn’t say or do anything, already bored. Or at least, trying to pretend she is. Her eyes betray her, though, darting off to Josie every other second. 

Alaric beams, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Then it’s settled! Keep your phones on you, and stay in groups, please.” 

Everyone disperses pretty quickly after that, with MG, Kaleb, and Jed going off in one direction and Lizzie and Josie in the other. Hope looks around for Alyssa, but she finds that the girl has somehow already disappeared.

The tribrid frowns and begins to walk aimlessly around by herself, spotting a small table selling cookies laced with calming and magical comfort herbs. 

Hope buys one, if only to sate her curiosity. After making sure the cookie hasn’t been poisoned or anything, she bites into it. 

She sighs as her shoulders and the rigid set to her spine instantly relaxes. 

The heavy stirring in her stomach that had been collecting all morning fades to a contented, light feeling that brings a small smile to Hope’s lips. 

It doesn’t hurt that the cookie tastes pretty good, too. 

(It better be. It cost, like, twenty bucks.) 

Hope continues to wander the convention for the next few hours. At one point, someone hands her a black bag that has some kind of hospital logo on it. The person even offers her a blood sample in a plastic cup, but she politely refuses it and keeps on walking. 

Sometimes, the tribrid will linger at certain tables, slowing down just to look at something that’s caught her eye. More often than not, it’s things that remind her of Josie Saltzman:

Pretty tattoos drawings of birds that change color when they flap their wings, yellow-orange flowers that bloom right in front of her, some random lady strumming her pink ukulele, the notes forming in the air like magic just as she plays them. 

She doesn’t really know why everything reminds her of Josie, but it’s most likely the fact that her brain seeks the siphoner out however it can. 

If she thinks about it, Hope realizes that her brain has been doing that a lot lately. Seeking out Josie, that is. Not in a very conscious way, nor one she could ever openly admit out loud, but it’s there. 

_There_.

Hope bumps into MG a little before lunch time. She finds him standing at some sort of daylight amulet booth, trying to customize his own ring. 

“Can you make it glow?” he asks the warlock assisting him, a childish smile on his face. Hope notices that he also has some sort of black face paint splattered above his left eyebrow. It looks like a tiny bat. Um. “Sorta like Green Lantern? Oh, can you change the color, too? Blue doesn’t really make my eyes pop. I feel like green would—“ 

“Oh, hey, Hope,” MG says, upon seeing her. 

She nods in greeting but doesn’t do much else, eyes focused on the stall selling talismans a few feet over. She bites the inside of her cheek in thought but ultimately decides not to check it out. 

“Are you having fun?” MG bounces on his heels, ignoring the man he was talking to just a few seconds ago. “Because I am having so, so _much_.” 

He tightens his fists and squeals, which has Hope raising her eyebrows a little. Nerd. 

“Yeah,” she says, with zero emotion and no enthusiasm whatsoever. She takes the next moment to look around, realizing that MG is alone. “Where’s Kaleb and Jed?” 

“Hmm. I don’t know,” the boy admits. “Last time I saw them, they were going to the bathroom together and then they disappeared.” 

“Weird.” Hope glances away awkwardly. 

“Yeah.” MG is awkward, too, kicking at the ground. 

The conversation becomes stilted for a few long seconds before Hope breaks the silence. 

“Have you seen Josie?” she blurts, because she hasn’t seen the siphoner since the group split up in the first place, and that was hours ago, and damn it, her magical-herb-calming cookie isn’t working anymore.

MG looks surprised. “I saw her inside the auditorium with Lizzie an hour or two ago.” 

Hope blinks and tilts her head in a silent question. 

“You know, for the fireworks magic show,” MG babbles, “it was really cool. They made the ceiling look like the night sky and everything. And then, at the end, they made pink clouds that we could actually touch and shape. I shaped mine into a turtle. It felt like cotton candy...” 

Huh. Hope had no idea that a firework show was going on. 

“Oh,” MG startles, straightening his back as the dreamy glint in his eyes fades away. He points behind Hope. “There they are now.” 

The tribrid turns around, her gaze falling on Josie and Lizzie the second she does. 

Each girl has about five bags of random stuff in each hand, but Hope can’t quite make out what. Josie’s wearing a bracelet Hope hadn’t seen on the siphoner earlier, and her left cheek is sparkling with some type of face paint, like MG’s. Hope can’t quite make out what that is, either. She thinks it might be a flame or something. 

Hope watches her, entranced, under a spell, unable to move or do anything but let herself be pulled into Josie’s orbit like some useless fucking space rock. 

It makes her breath catch dangerously in her throat, but that is nothing compared to what happens when Josie darts her gaze randomly around the room and locks her eyes with Hope’s. 

Feeling like a creep caught out in the bushes, Hope immediately ducks behind the stall she was standing in front of, which just so happens to be the talisman shop she had been eyeing earlier. 

She pulls MG with her—a hand fisted into his shirt—and he lets out an undignified squeak on the way down. 

“Why are we hiding?” the boy whispers, not very quietly. Hope flushes. 

“I don’t know,” she tells him, sneaking glances at Josie. MG nods and discreetly tries to smooth out the side of his shirt Hope had wrinkled. The tribrid is thankful that he’s just going along with it. 

“That’ll be two hundred,” some random voice perks up from behind both of them, causing Hope and MG to startle up and out of their hiding positions. 

Hope gives a small yelp and MG all but screams before they realize that the voice is coming from the male vendor of the stall. 

“For the necklace,” the man clarifies, smiling widely. Hope rubs a hand at the back of her neck to settle the hairs standing on edge there. She absentmindedly notices that the man’s teeth are filthy yellow and cracked. 

He looks a bit...crazy. 

She turns her head to look at the necklace the man’s referring to: a slightly dull, oval pendant that shines when it hits the light. Hope leans in to get a better look at the elaborate engravings etched into the metal of the talisman. 

“Two hundred just for a necklace?” MG sniggers nervously, probably creeped out by the man as well. 

“Not just a necklace,” the man says, shaking his head and waving his finger solemnly. “A talisman of great power. Raises the voice of the loud. Speaks for the silent. Facit quietam quae audistis.” 

His lips pull around the syllables of the dead language perfectly, tongue clipping and curling around each word like he’s rehearsed saying this several times. 

The tribrid stares at the man, eyes narrowed as she takes him in. He does the same, but his expression is much more open and readable than hers. 

MG leans in to whisper in Hope’s ear like the man can’t hear him. 

“Hey, I didn’t take Latin,” he says. “What did that mean?” 

“Uh...it...” She blinks and clears her throat, feeling it grow thick with something she can’t name. Her eyebrows knit together as she glances off to MG, automatically translating the words in her head. “Makes quiet things heard.” 

Hope looks away from the boy and back over to where she had last seen Josie and her sister. They’re close enough now that Hope can just barely make out their conversation.

“—and then he said _I_ needed to behave,” Lizzie finishes what seems to be a long-winded rant. She rolls her eyes so hard Hope fears she might never see the color in her eyes again. “ _Me_.” 

Josie laughs. “How are you still hung up on this? It’s been hours.” 

The blonde seems a little offended, at that. 

“How are you _not_?” she shoots back, flipping her hair over her shoulder. Josie shrugs, but Lizzie seems not to care. She only continues. 

“I can’t believe Dad suggested that I should apologize to that Scooby-Doo Wannabe,” she says. “If anything, Jed should be apologizing to me. Not the other way around.” 

Josie bites the inside of her cheek and pulls her lip in thought, which goes unnoticed. 

“Like, I don’t even know how he’s the alpha of the pack at school.” Lizzie suddenly gets an idea. She brightens up and grins, something wolfish and happy, like she’s pleased with herself. “You know what? Maybe I should just challenge him for the spot...” 

“You’re not even a werewolf,” Josie mumbles quietly, but her words go unheard. 

Hope tears her gaze away and snaps her eyes back to the necklace dangling in front of her like an offering. She pulls out her wallet and makes an easy decision, ignoring the stunned look on MG’s face. 

Is it really so surprising? 

Yet... 

Honestly, the tribrid doesn’t see herself giving Josie the talisman in the near future, or in any near future, and especially not right now. 

But maybe in a year or two. 

Yeah. A year or two. Josie’s birthday just passed, so she might just be able to get away with giving it to the other girl for her sweet sixteenth. 

Yes. She’ll do that. Next year. 

—

MG and Hope report back to the agreed meeting place about half an hour later, which had went from the entrance of the convention building to a small taco food truck outside and then finally to a small cafe inside selling deli sandwiches. 

At least, that’s what MG claims. Hope hadn’t been in the supposed group chat the boy had been receiving messages from up until Josie had added her in thirty seconds ago. 

Funnily enough, the group chat is named: 

** don’t add hope or you’re getting blocked **

As a result, Josie gets removed by Lizzie from the chat not a single minute later and Hope gets kicked out right after her. The tribrid is pretty sure this counts as cyber bullying. 

She spends the next few minutes standing in line at the cafe with MG as he babbles on about some green crystal ball he had seen. Just as she reaches the front of the line, she receives an individual text message from Josie. Individual. 

Hope’s heart jumps into her throat of its own accord. 

** hey can you add me back in :( lizzie kicked me out **

Hope swallows thickly. Her palms suddenly go slick and she fumbles with the keyboard on the screen. She has to wipe her fingers on her jeans and retype her response before sending it. 

** Sorry. Lizzie kicked me out, too.  **

Oh, fuck. What if Josie thinks she’s some weird-ass grammar freak? God. Why had she capitalized everything? Fuck. Fuck. A comma, too? Why. Why. Why. Why—

Hope bites down on her tongue so hard she tastes blood, and then adds:

** are you not with her?  **

There. That’s better. Next time, she just needs to drop the question mark and then Josie will think she’s cool. 

Oh, shit. What if the siphoner thinks she’s lame for double-texting? 

** no no i am **

Hope pauses and waits for another text. It doesn’t come. 

Damn it. What’s she supposed to say to that? Maybe Josie doesn’t want to continue the conversation? 

Suddenly, her phone buzzes again. 

** she’s just being difficult, you know how she is **

Okay. Maybe commas are cool. 

** we’ll see you in five, my dad’s with us **

Hope smiles. Josie had triple-texted her. That must mean something. Right? 

Right. 

Her smile grows wider and she greets the cashier at the register with a cheerful hello. MG raises his eyebrows and drops his mouth open, but he thankfully doesn’t comment. 

She orders some kind of turkey sandwich while MG gets a BLT and she pays for them both, since she’s in such a great mood and all. 

The pair of them step out of line and push two tables together, in order to have enough seating for the entire group. They don’t have to wait long before Kaleb and Jed appear, arguing in hushed voices. 

Hope catches a small glimpse of face paint underneath his right eye. She narrows her eyes. “Is that a...wolf paw?” 

Jed blushes, just a little. “Kaleb double-dog-dared me.” 

Hmm. “Cute.” 

Kaleb grins like a child. MG does, too. Hope guesses that they’re all children, now. She had thought one had to be under the age of ten to be eligible for face paint, but it’s not like she can judge. 

Alaric and his two daughters arrive a moment later. 

Hope tries not to stare as she sees Josie, but it happens despite her best efforts. She quickly notices that the other girl isn’t looking in her direction at all. 

She frowns. Hadn’t they just been texting? Almost...almost like... _friends_? 

Hope suddenly can’t remember a single time Josie has looked her in the eye for longer than three seconds. 

Wait.

Has it always been this way? 

With Hope looking and Josie not? With Hope wondering how Josie can just stand there and look so pretty and not seem aware of it at all? Or is the tribrid just noticing this now? 

“Hold on,” Alaric pauses as he sits down and places his wallet and keys on the table, eyes roaming the group. “Where’s Alyssa Chang?” 

The table goes silent. Hope snickers and unwraps her sandwich, not bothered one bit. For all she cares, the dark witch can get kidnapped or something. Still laughing, she brings the rim of her cup of water to her mouth and sips on it. 

Bad choice. 

“Right here!” A high-pitched voice belonging to none other than Alyssa Chang purrs against her ear, puffing her hot breath along the skin of Hope’s neck. 

Hope chokes on her water with a small yelp as it goes down the wrong pipe. She wraps her hand around her throat at a poor attempt to force air into her lungs. 

What doesn’t help at all is Alyssa leaning further into her personal space and rubbing the heat of her palm down Hope’s back in soothing, little circles. If anything, it only makes the tribrid feel even more uncomfortable. What’s worse is knowing that Alyssa is enjoying getting a rise out of her like this. 

Hope subtly tries to move away, which is impossibly difficult since she’s sitting on a chair, which is trapped between Alyssa’s and MG’s. 

Oh, yeah. That’s another thing. Since when had Alyssa sat down next to her without Hope noticing? 

Finally, after what seems like an hour but really is only a minute or two, the tribrid collects herself and Alyssa stops rubbing her back. She turns around in her chair to glare at the other girl, but Alyssa only meets her gaze with a smile and barely-concealed mirth. 

Hope sighs and tries to concentrate back onto her food, which is hard to do because Lizzie starts flirting with the handsome, male server cleaning the table next to them. 

“Hey, Jo,” MG says at one point, causing Hope to glance over. She’s just curious. “You seem, kind of, bummed out.” 

Josie giggles nervously with a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. She waves him off. “Really? No, I-I’m fine!” 

“Are you sure?” 

“Yeah.” Josie shrugs, but Hope sees the way her eyes glance to Alyssa. For just a second. “Thank you, but it’s really nothing.” 

Lizzie turns away from flirting with the server just to insert herself into the conversation. “She’s in a mood because she lost her precious trophy-wife lanyard.” 

Oh. 

The one with Hope’s last name on it? 

The blonde laughs but Josie doesn’t find it so funny. She furrows her eyebrows in exasperation and snaps, “That’s not why I’m—“ 

The siphoner cuts herself off suddenly, dark eyes dropping to her lap. When she speaks again, her voice is much more quiet. Timid. She shrinks in on herself like a turtle retreating back into its shell.“I mean, it’s not a big deal.” 

Though Hope should probably stay silent and keep her mouth shut, she can’t quite help herself. She rushes to offer, “I can help with a locator spell, if you want?” 

All heads turn to her. Lizzie looks at her like she’s the cockroach crawling on the floor in the corner of the room. 

_Oh_. Hope had forgotten that she wasn’t a part of the conversation and was merely eavesdropping. 

The tribrid ignores the way Lizzie rolls her eyes in favor of watching Josie blush. It rises up her neck and to her cheeks, even painting the tips of her ears. Hope’s hands twitch limply underneath the table, as if wanting to reach up and figure out what blood just underneath the skin feels like. 

“No, no, it’s okay,” the siphoner says, quickly. “It’s really not that important.” 

Hope nods and looks away. Damn. She had really just wanted an excuse to hold Josie’s hands in her own and perform magic with her. Maybe...

“Why don’t you just take mine?” Hope blurts, before she can think. She knows that Josie is a little younger than her and might still be in that teenage phase where she gets attached to material types of things too easily. God knows the tribrid herself had not been able to let go of a frayed, ruined paintbrush last year because it was her favorite. 

Or maybe Hope is just coming up with excuses to see her name wrapped around Josie’s neck. 

Her fingers curl around the lanyard around her own neck a second later and she tugs it off. Alyssa starts laughing next to her and Hope immediately regrets it. 

“Oh, no. Don’t be silly,” Josie tells her, and then lowers her voice to a hiss as she looks accusingly at her sister. “Look what you did, Lizzie.” 

Lizzie isn’t paying attention. She has long since turned away from them and is back to staring dreamily at the server she had been flirting with a couple of minutes ago. 

Hope pushes the lanyard across the table. She doesn’t miss the way Josie watches it come towards her. “Yellow’s your favorite color, right?” 

The siphoner slowly drags her eyes up to meet Hope’s own before pulling her bottom lip into her mouth and biting down on it. Hope is forced to glance away for fear she might go into cardiac arrest. 

“I can’t.” 

“You can.” Hope smirks, just a little. “You _should_. It’d be rude not to accept it.” 

“It’d be rude,” Josie repeats slowly, an echo of a sound, fingers already sliding towards the lanyard. Hope nods just as slowly, and if amusement flickers across her eyes before she can hide it, Josie doesn’t call her out for it. 

“Exactly,” she says. 

“I don’t know—“ 

“Come on,” Hope tilts her head playfully, tone beyond suggestive. “You know you want to.” 

“Hope.” Holy fuck, Josie’s still biting her lip. “It’s yours.” 

The siphoner’s body seems to not be listening to her words. Hope notices that her hand isn’t a single inch away from the lanyard now. She obviously wants it. Great. The tribrid has the other girl _right_ where she wants her. 

“That doesn’t matter.” Hope leans forward, to whisper in a voice like fire, “If you want it, take it.” 

Josie blushes. Maybe they’re not talking about the lanyard. 

“Oh my fucking god,” Alyssa Chang speaks up with a roll of her eyes as she slams her sandwich down to the table, reminding the pair that they’re not alone, and that they’re actually in public, and oh— “Can you guys stop making out for one second? Some of us are actually trying to eat here.” 

Hope’s mouth runs dry. She swallows, which does nothing to help her suddenly parched throat. Hadn’t she just been drinking water? 

Silence falls on the whole group more quickly than the first time. Alaric, who had been sitting off to the side in order to give his students a false sense of privacy, snaps his head up and turns a weird mix of purple and red. Hope thinks he might be choking on his sandwich. 

For once, even Lizzie Saltzman has nothing to say. She’s quite clearly thinking about saying something, though. Her mouth keeps opening and closing a bit like the tuna fish in the sandwich Jed is inhaling down mindlessly. He doesn’t look like he cares at all whether or not Hope and Josie have been making out recently.

The only one who seems to care the most about Alyssa’s comment is Hope. And maybe Josie. 

Within seconds, the siphoner scrambles off her chair and mutters something about having to use the bathroom. In her rush, she fails to notice that her sandwich is still in her hand. She makes it to the bathroom door before coming back and plopping it down on the table, picking up Hope’s lanyard in place of it. 

Hope smiles as she watches her sling it around her neck in one, easy move. She continues to smile as she watches Josie leave, even though the brunette doesn’t meet her eyes and only looks down at the floor. 

After that, the whole lunch affair goes by pretty quickly, since Alaric rushes the group the entire time and practically stuffs everyone’s sandwiches down their throats. Well, everyone’s sandwiches but Josie’s, who had ordered something vegan that Hope wasn’t completely sure if it was actually a sandwich or a cardboard block of tofu wrapped in a leaf. 

But. She’s not one to judge. 

“Okay, people.” Alaric claps his hands together in excitement as they all stand around in the middle of the convention center. Hope taps her foot. They’ve been waiting ten minutes now, and for what? “I’m going to make this short because we all have things to get to.” 

Hope honestly has nowhere to get to, if she’s being honest. She’s actually kind of confused as to what she’s supposed to be doing right now. She knows that Alaric had wanted her to check out the pack dynamics seminar, but she can truly not think of anything worse. 

Hold on. Hope can vaguely remember reading a flyer about a magical baking competition later. _That_ definitely interests her. 

Maybe—

Alaric checks his watch. “Actually, I’m going to cut this a lot shorter. The ripper panel starts soon. Josie, you have the map, right? You’re good with directions. Lead the way.” 

“What?” Josie pouts, voice raising to a slight whine. “Dad. I can’t. I have the potting demo, remember?” 

“Oh!” Kaleb perks up, looking more excited than when he had seen the blood food truck on their way in. The tribrid notices that he hasn’t been paying attention until now. Still, it’s clear that he hadn’t heard her entire sentence. “Like... _weed_?” 

He even lowers his voice and raises his eyebrows. “Can I come?” 

Josie shakes her head, looking almost embarrassed. She blushes. Hope finds it all adorable. “No, uh, they’re demonstrating how to correctly plot soil for a magical plant called—“ 

Kaleb cuts her off, looking thoroughly weirded-out and disappointed. “Damn, girl.” 

Hope bites the inside of her cheek before speaking up. Her face feels oddly hot. “I’ll go with you, Josie...” 

The siphoner lightens up and smiles shyly at Hope. Too bad. 

“No, Hope,” Alaric cuts the tribrid off, shaking his head. “I want you to go to the werewolf dynamics seminar.” 

He looks over the group. 

“Okay, Kaleb go with Josie,” he says, pointing at every person for no real reason. “MG, you’re coming with me to the ripper panel. The rest of you can go to the werewolf seminar. Lizzie, you’re with Hope. Alyssa, go with Jed.” 

Alyssa doesn’t seem to like that. 

“Hmm,” she hums slowly, as if thinking. “I don’t think so.” 

Hope narrows her eyes at Alyssa, trying to focus on anything but the fact that Alaric paired her up with Lizzie. 

“Why?” the headmaster asks. 

“I’m not missing my dark magic expo in an hour just for some doggy talkshow,” Alyssa explains with a small lift of her shoulders. Hope dearly wants to kill her. 

“Dark magic?” Alaric laughs nervously, eyes darting everywhere but Alyssa. “How about that...plant...potting...thing Josie mentioned instead? You can even go together.” 

Josie doesn’t look too happy about his suggestion. 

“Dad—“ 

“Kaleb, go with Jed instead of Alyssa.” Alaric ignores his daughter. Hope throws her a sympathetic look. “MG, we should get going. Dorian and Emma are on their way and will meet us there. Everyone else, make sure to stay in pairs and don’t get lost. If I find out that one of you has decided to completely ignore the partner I gave you, we’re _all_ staying in the hotel for the rest of this trip.” 

Damn. There goes Hope’s plan of abandoning Lizzie and wandering off on her own. Alaric continues. “One person ruins it for everyone. Understood?” 

Not a single person nods or agrees, but the man smiles as if they all did. _Bastard_. 

Hope watches Lizzie’s face contort into a grimace of pain. She smells something like blood, and briefly imagines that the blonde is biting down on her tongue to stop herself from arguing. 

The group split off in different directions almost immediately after Alaric has finished speaking. Hope takes a second to watch Josie walk off with Alyssa, before turning back around. 

Crap. 

Where did Kaleb and Jed go? 

Hope had been relying on following them to the seminar so she wouldn’t have to walk with Lizzie and attempt to hold a conversation with her by herself. 

Lizzie—who is already walking away. Hope has to jog to catch up. 

“Hurry along, Half-Pint,” the blonde calls over her shoulder, flipping her hair from one side to the other. Hope grumbles underneath her breath at the short joke, before raising her voice so Lizzie can hear her. 

“Why haven’t you thrown a temper tantrum over your dad forcing us to go to this thing together?” she asks, more curious than anything else. Lizzie huffs and starts to hand over the five shopping bags she’s carrying, like Hope is a measly peasant and Lizzie’s the queen of the world or something. 

The tribrid grits her teeth together but says nothing and takes the bags. 

“Not that it’s any of your business,” the blonde drawls, “but my father and I came to an agreement that I would attempt to be more civil to those beneath me.” 

Hope’s frown deepens into a scowl. 

“I mean,” Lizzie corrects herself easily, “around me.” 

Hope blinks, mulling over the words. “He bribed you not to start fights with me, didn’t he?” 

Lizzie pauses, just enough that her steps stutter for a second or two. “That’s not the point,” she says, after that second passes. 

Hope gives her a dirty look. 

“Fine,” the blonde admits with a dramatic sigh. “Daddy...”

Hope cringes. Who still calls their father that at this age? 

“...Felt that my witty, insanely-hilarious remarks were more cruel than funny. Of course, I disagree, but...” 

Hope rolls her eyes as Lizzie waves her hand in a so-so motion, and then continues talking. “As long as I can guarantee that there won’t be any more verbal altercations for the remainder of this trip, he promised me that he’ll keep the school kitchens stocked with Half-Baked Ben and Jerry’s when we get back home.” 

“So,” Hope squints her eyes thoughtfully, “you’re being nice to me for ice cream?” 

Lizzie ignores her, and stops so suddenly that it gives Hope whiplash. “Huh.” 

“What?” the tribrid snarks, biting back a growl of annoyance. This entire situation is making her very on edge. 

“Do you know where we’re going?” 

Hope stops suddenly, too. 

She looks around the crowd of people near them, finding that she actually has no idea where the two of them are headed. Looking back, Lizzie and her had been mindlessly walking around with no true destination in mind. 

Hope takes out the convention building map sticking out of one of Lizzie’s bags. She reads it upside down. “It says the seminar is in Conference Room S.” 

The blonde snatches it out of her grasp. She points at the hallway in front of them, which has an arrow marking the way to Conference Room 1. “The rooms go by numbers, not letters, you moron.” 

“I thought you were supposed to be nice to me?” Hope sighs. She mutters, “Calling me a moron is the exact opposite of that.” 

“I don’t have to be nice to you,” Lizzie tells her plainly. “I have to be nice to you in front of Dad.” 

Hope runs her tongue along the front of her teeth to stop herself from arguing back. It’s not worth it. She’s above childish bickering. 

“Ugh.” Lizzie waves the map in front of Hope’s nose. “Is your wolf-y side good for _anything_? Can’t you, like, sniff out the direction?” 

Because that makes sense. 

“There’s too many scents to...” Hope trails off, before realizing that the blonde had been sarcastic. She huffs out an exhale of a breath. 

“Nevermind.” 

—

The pair of them show up to the seminar ten minutes late, so they’re forced to shove their way through about three pack of wolves to find two empty seats. They’re also the last two seats available in the entire room, so it forces the rest of the unlucky people inside to stand in the back. 

At the front of the room sits a tall man on a black stool, with tight jeans on and a loose, casual shirt. He’s wearing glasses, but even from the distance Hope can tell that he doesn’t need them—that he’s only wearing them to make himself look smarter. 

He has some sort of slideshow set up behind him on a large, white projection screen. The slide reads: 

** Triggering the Curse.  **

“As you all most likely know,” the man is saying, “lycanthropy is an inherited genetic condition, more commonly thought of as a curse. A wolf cannot be turned by a bite, as is the custom for vampires. Instead, they inherit the gene from at least one of their parents, and then trigger this gene by taking a human life. This act can be either deliberate or accidental, intention doesn’t matter. Would anyone like to share their experience of activating the curse?” 

Hope finds herself surprised to see so many werewolves around the room raising their hands for a chance to speak up. 

“What is this?” Lizzie mutters next to her. “The AA for werewolves?” 

Hope is pretty sure that’s offensive somehow. 

“Okay.” The man looks delighted to see so many hands. Hope realizes only then that she doesn’t know his name. “We’ll go around the room, starting from the left. You, sir?” 

“Car crash. I was driving late one night after a party and loss control of the wheel. My best friend died. It was my fault, I—I was drunk, I shouldn’t have been driving.” 

“I was showing my little brother how to put someone in a head-lock and accidentally snapped his neck.” 

“My sister in a drowning accident. I-I was supposed to be watching her swim, but I took my eyes off of her for a second. It was only a second, I...I tried to do CPR, but I guess I was doing it too hard and I think I might have broken her ribs or something. I, uh, I don’t know. I just heard a weird cracking sound.” 

It goes on like that, with each story getting more gruesome as people continue to share. Hope starts to zone out as she recalls the moment she had triggered her own curse. She hadn’t even known it at the time. Does that make her a monster? To take an innocent human life and not even realize it during? 

Who is Hope kidding? She _is_ a monster. She has always been one. Maybe if— 

_No_. 

What ends up bringing the tribrid back to the present is a familiar head of black hair a couple of seats away. Jed. 

He raises his hand suddenly, before dropping it just as fast when he seems to lose his nerve. 

“Yes?” The man at the front of the room implores him to speak with a reassuring smile, but Jed shakes his head. 

“Nevermind. Sorry.” His voice isn’t as even as it usually is, and Hope’s stomach twists uncomfortably. She catches a small glimpse of Kaleb clapping Jed on the back for comfort. 

“That’s quite alright,” the man says, before moving on. 

After everyone is done sharing their personal stories, the speaker at the front spends the next half hour walking around and talking about the new supernatural abilities one gains from the curse, such as accelerated healing and strength. Of course, he says it’s important to mention, the downfalls of being a wolf can be far greater in number than the benefits. Like impulse control and rage. 

(Other than the impossibly painful part of breaking and reforming all your bones during the full moon.) 

“We get it, all werewolves have anger issues!” someone yells nearby. Hope is horrified to see that it’s Lizzie. She shrinks back into her chair the best she can, as if willing her body to melt to a puddle underneath it. Lizzie herself seems unbothered. She’s shouting through a mouthful of popcorn, the buttery bag strewn over her lap. She even throws one in the direction of the speaker. He leans away, taken aback. “Tell us something we don’t know!” 

“Lizzie!” Hope hisses through clenched teeth, voice quiet and whispered. She eyes the bag of popcorn with hunger, lowering her voice to ask, “Hey, where did you get that?”

Lizzie ignores her. 

“Patience, young lady,” the man at the front says. His eyes sparkle mysteriously, glinting off the dim lighting of the room. “I was just getting to that. In fact, I think I have something that might be of interest to all of you.” 

He grabs the remote for his slideshow presentation and appears to a click a small button. The projection screen switches to a new slide, which says:

**Mates**. 

The room breaks out into low murmurs and hushed whispers. Hope rolls her eyes. Werewolf mates aren’t real. They never have been. Anyone who believes that myth to be true for a second is an outright idiot. 

“That’s right. Mates.” The man grins, happy with the reaction he got. “This year, for the first time at SDSC, I would like to introduce the concept of destined lovers. Soulmates.” 

Lizzie leans forward in her seat, dropping the bag of popcorn to the floor. She licks her lips, almost fascinated. Hope rolls her eyes even harder. How is Lizzie Saltzman of all people buying into this? 

“While we may look to the moon to guide us and choose when we shift,” the man continues, “it most primarily decides our mates for us—someone who will love us unconditionally, someone to protect and cherish. The one person in the world that is most compatible to us.” 

“It is our responsibility to make them feel like we are deserving of them.” Hope crosses her arms over her chest and sits back. She might as well enjoy herself. She could use a good laugh. “While some other species tend to thing of us as simply animalistic beings, we do not have to stand by and allow our instincts to have free reign of our actions. It is crucial for a wolf to gain their mate’s trust and win them over, instead of just claiming them like feral brutes. This is much easier said than done.” 

Hope clamps a hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh. 

Mates. Do. Not. Exist. 

She can’t believe that this man is so good at lying, especially to impressionable, young wolves. Most of the audience is in their teens. He is pretty charismatic, though, she’ll give him that. 

“Werewolves who are trying to...” The man trails off, raising his eyes to the ceiling as he thinks. “...For lack of a better word, court their mate, usually don’t even know it themselves. By looking for these signs in yourselves and the werewolves around you, you can figure out if you or someone you know has found their mate.” 

He grabs the screen remote again. “Important clue number one...” 

He clicks the same button from earlier with a flick of his wrist, changing the slide to the next one:

** Body Language. **

“A werewolf will always try to put themselves between their mate and another person,” the man says. “When this isn’t possible, look for other signs, such as a protective stance. This could mean anything from a guiding hand on their mate’s back to constantly facing their direction. Werewolves will try their best not to let their mate out of their sight.” 

When Hope glances at Lizzie, the other girl is already meeting her gaze with a strange, calculating one of her own. The tribrid blinks in confusion and looks away, feeling oddly hot. 

She’s done nothing wrong, though. Why is Lizzie staring at her like that? 

“Number two: they will try to impress their mate.” He changes the slide again. “Be it a show of strength or appearance, wolves always want to look their best for their mate and make them feel special and safe. It can be as simple as complimenting them or even remembering small details about their mate that endears them to the wolf.” 

He pauses, still pacing the front of the room. He seems to find his words pretty easily after a brief moment. “For instance, a take-out order or a favorite color.” 

Lizzie whirls her head at Hope for some unknown reason. Hope pretends not to feel the blonde’s eyes on her. 

“Number three: possessiveness.” The word on the screen is in big, bold letters. The font is even in a deep red color like blood. “Wolves like to mark their territory. As awful as this might sound, mates are considered their property, so they get the urge—often unconscious—to mark them, too. They do this by giving them articles of clothing or their possessions. Like jackets or jewelry...” 

A weird scuffling noise like someone abruptly standing up from their chair sounds throughout the room, followed by another one. Hope darts her eyes over to the source, only to find Kaleb and Jed standing face-to-face and nose-to-nose, both pushing each other’s shoulders and snarling at one another. 

“She’s _my_ mate!” Jed pushes Kaleb. 

“No.” Kaleb pushes Jed. “She’s not.” 

Hope and Lizzie share a meaningful look and instantly spring out of their seats in a hurry, rushing over to stop the impending fight. Jed looks about a second away from launching his fist at Kaleb when the tribrid manages to sandwich herself inbetween them. Lizzie stands off to the side, folding her arms across her chest and fixing them both with an exaggerated look. 

“What the hell are you guys doing?” Hope nearly growls, a hand on both their chests. The man at the front of the room has long-since stopped talking. 

“Let’s not ask stupid questions, Hope,” Lizzie says, lazily. “They’re obviously causing a scene in a thinly-veiled plot to publicly humiliate me.” 

Hope raises her eyebrows, looking at the blonde like she’s crazy. “Are you serious right now? I doubt this has anything to do with you.” 

“This has _everything_ to do with me!” Lizzie argues back heatedly. “If anything, it’s clearly a personal attack to render me—“ 

“Can you shut up for _one_ damn moment?” Hope cuts her off, a corner of her lips pulled into a snarl. 

Kaleb doesn’t hear themboth, still glaring angrily at Jed with a clear accusation in his eyes. “He thinks he has some kind of wolfy claim on Alyssa now because of Big Mouth over there.” 

He gestures off to the man who had been speaking, who downturns his lips into a slightly-childish pout. Hope tilts her head to the side curiously as she looks at him upclose. Yeah, his mouth is a little too big for his face. 

“You’re fighting over Chang?” Lizzie lets out a sharp laugh. “Oh, God, this is hilarious.” 

Everyone ignores her.

“Neither of you have a claim on her,” Hope tells them, raising her voice over the sounds of Lizzie still laughing. The blonde is even doubled-over now, gripping at her stomach between bouts of high-pitched giggles. “She’s a person, not property. Now sit back down and get a hold of yourselves or leave.” 

Both boys keep their lips sealed shut and sit back down with disgruntled looks on their faces. Hope fixes them with one more stern look before pulling Lizzie away, satisfied. 

A beat passes in the silent room. 

“Sorry,” Jed grumbles quietly, clearly embarrassed as he realizes that everyone is still watching them. Kaleb is too embarrassed to even speak. 

Hope and Lizzie try to casually retreat back to their original seats, which they soon notice had been stolen the second they left them alone. Instead, two men are sitting in them now, sharing the bag of popcorn Lizzie had dropped on the floor earlier. 

Great. 

Now they have to stand in the back, which isn’t a big problem for Lizzie, but is understandably a minor one for Hope. Five-foot-three Hope. _Yay_. 

The man at the front of the room hesitantly resumes his lecture. “Thank you, gentlemen, for proving my point. It can be difficult to know for certain whether or not you have found a true mate, which leads me to my most important clue. The secret to finding your mate is...” 

Everyone leans forward in their seats, desperate to hear the ending, almost entranced. Hope wonders if the man is a warlock as well as a wolf—if he spelled everyone in the room to worship him like he’s God.

Probably not. 

The man suddenly glances down at his watch and cuts himself off. “Oh.” 

Hope raises her eyebrows. 

“It appears as though I’m out of time today,” he says, shrugging. “You’re all free to go, I know the pack-bonding activities next door are starting in a couple of minutes, and I wouldn’t want anyone to be late. I’ll be here to take questions until five.” 

Some people start to slowly rise from their seats. “Please don’t hesitate to purchase some of my educational CDs regarding the topic of werewolf mates, as well as my best-selling book, _Fifty Shades of Lycanthrophy_ , at the low price of fifty dollars. For a limited time only, you can receive a free personal autograph by yours truly...” 

Hope tunes the man out after that. If anything, he lost all credibility the moment he had started advertising his best-seller. Not that he had any in the first place. It’s just, Hope thinks, he obviously cares more about making money than telling the truth. 

“What a scumbag,” Hope murmurs, looking to Lizzie for agreement. The blonde isn’t facing her, though. Her eyes are dead-set on the man Hope had been crucifying in her head. She still doesn’t know his name. 

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Lizzie tells her, obviously not paying attention. “I’m going to go...talk...to him. I’ll be right back.” 

She leaves before Hope can argue or even question her. The tribrid stammers over her words and sputters out a load of nonsense in response, watching Lizzie disappear into the crowd without once looking back. 

Does the other girl seriously expect her to wait around as she has a chit-chat with a grown ass man? Hope huffs and moves herself out of the way as the room empties just enough that she doesn’t bump into every single person she comes across. 

Still, a few packs of wolves are lingering behind, dangerously eyeing the high stack of Fifty Shades of Lycanthropy books on a small table in the corner of the room. 

Hope glances back to where she had last seen Lizzie, but the girl is no longer talking to the man at the front of the room, who is now signing autographs. Huh. Weird. 

Where is she? 

Crap. Hope looks around the room, not finding the blonde anywhere inside of it. Alaric is going to kill her...

A hand suddenly reaches out behind her and latches onto her shoulder in a vice grip. Hope spins around right away, eyes falling on an indignant Lizzie Saltzman, who is practically foaming at the mouth. 

“You’re trying to mate my sister!”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u for reading this crack fic :)

“Excuse me?!” 

Hope tries to sound as shocked and furious as she can. It doesn’t quite work, and her voice cracks like a prepubescent boy’s. Damn it. 

She clears her throat and tries again. “What the _hell_ are you talking about?” 

Lizzie gives her an unimpressed look, obviously not convinced by the act. But it’s not an act, is it? No, it’s _not_.

Hope huffs, lungs struggling to pull in air. She can barely inhale and exhale right, breathless at the thought of Josie being her—

No.

_No_.

Josie is not her _anything_. Not anything at all. They’re not even friends. Strangers, really. 

“I am—“ Hope looks around and lowers her voice, hissing, “I am _not_ trying to mate your sister.” 

She’s embarrassed that she even has to say it out loud. Unfortunately, Lizzie doesn’t seem to miss the way her face burns red from her ears to her cheeks. It only makes her angrier. 

“Don’t play dumb,” she growls, placing her hands on her hips and glaring at Hope. "You honestly expect me to believe otherwise?” 

Her lips curl into a sneer. “I mean, it’s no wonder you’ve been panting after her like the horny dog that you are.” 

“Panting after her?” Hope chokes on her spit, stammers over her words. Fuck. No. She’s not horny. She’s not. “I haven’t been doing that.” 

Her eyes turn pleading. Desperate. “I haven’t been doing anything.” 

Lizzie scoffs. “Oh, please—“ 

“Stop,” Hope cuts her off, rubbing at her forehead tiredly. The blonde actually listens, looking taken aback. “What proof do you have?” 

Lizzie just smirks and starts listing all her reasons off her fingers. Great. Hope curses herself inwardly. That was not the reaction she had been expecting. 

“One,” the blonde says. “Your weird, wolfy throwdown with that alpha this morning.” 

“Wait.” Hope pauses to think about it. “What?” 

“The one that pushed Josie?” she asks, eyebrows furrowed. “You weren’t even there for that!”

“Oh, no need.” Lizzie lets out a sharp laugh like a scoff. “Josie told me _all_ about it.” 

Hope opens her mouth and quickly closes it. She does a double-take, not sure she heard that right. Or maybe too sure. 

“She did?” Damn it. She can’t quite keep the hope, the satisfaction at hearing that, out of her voice. Lizzie pounces on it. 

“Ha! Proof number two.” The blonde grins, as if she just got one over her. “The look on your face right now.” 

Hope scowls and darts her eyes away, feeling caught. Her stomach clenches. She doesn’t know why. 

“Number three,” Lizzie continues without a care. “You’re constantly trying to impress her.” 

Hope glances up and has to bite her tongue to stop herself from snarling at the other girl and foaming at the mouth like a rabid animal. She manages. Just barely. 

“How?” 

Lizzie’s eyes glint happily. Hope has the thought that she looks _so_ fucking evil right now. 

“You have her favorite color memorized,” the blonde says, “and back when we were in Texas, you knew her awful, veggie pizza order by heart.” 

More for herself, she adds, “ _I_ don’t even know that.” 

Hope scoffs. Josie eats it all the time. How can the tribrid not remember it? How can _anyone_ not? She grumbles a few select swear words underneath her breath, but says nothing that Lizzie can hear. 

“Not to mention, last night you carried all of our suitcases for no reason.” The blonde raises her eyebrows and smirks. “You were _obviously_ trying to impress her with your strength. It’s exactly what Mister Tight Pants said to look out for.” 

“With my strength?” Hope can barely get the words out. That had not been her intention. At all. She chokes down something bitter and tells the other girl, “You’re crazy.” 

“Maybe,” Lizzie agrees, “but I’m not done.” 

Hope sighs and gestures for her to continue. Whatever. She might as well listen. 

“Last, but somehow not least,” the blonde finishes, “you’re constantly marking her as your territory.” 

“Marking her?” Hope screws up her face in disbelief. As if everything else Lizzie had said wasn’t complete bullshit. “Can you even hear yourself speak right now? I would never do that.” 

“Oh, really?” Lizzie narrows her eyes. “How is making her wear a necklace with your name on it not possessive? You could have peed on her and it wouldn’t have been any less obvious.” 

“I didn’t make her wear it!” Hope chooses to ignore that last part. She doesn’t know why Lizzie would even say something like that. 

“And it wasn’t a necklace,” she adds childishly. She crosses her arms, feeling a bit defensive about it. “Besides, I was being nice—“ 

“Nice? More like sneaky.” Lizzie steps forward and digs a finger into Hope’s shoulder, voice taking on a strangely-threatening tone. “I can see right through your lies, Snoopy. My sister might be oblivious, but you won’t get away with it with me. I won’t let you.” 

“Yup.” She smiles to herself, like she’s just won their little game. 

“I see _right_ through you,” she repeats, poking Hope again and again. The tribrid tries to step back but Lizzie only follows her. “You’re peeing. You’re peeing _all over her_.” 

Hope catches Lizzie’s finger with her hand and shoves it back at her. Her eyes flash gold and she forces herself to calm down. It won’t do well to prove the blonde right by accident. 

“No,” she says, as calmly as possible, but her heart is pounding. “I’m not trying to do _anything_ with her—“ 

Just to be cut off again. 

“You’re right you’re not,” Lizzie tells her. “If you try anything, if you even _think_ about trying anything, I’ll tell her all about your little wolfy problem. And something tells me you don’t want her to know.” 

Hope swallows hard. No. Panic forms a pit in her stomach. No. Lizzie can’t, she _can’t_ —

“You can’t do that,” she chokes out, struggling to breathe, but trying not to show it. She can almost feel the words cutting her throat on the way up.

Lizzie’s answering smile only makes it worse. 

“Oh, really? We’ll see.” 

—

“Hey, girls,” Alaric greets them when they finally return to the group. Emma and Dorian are standing right beside him. “You’re here a little late. Did your event run long?” 

Hope tries to stop the bitter words rising to the tip of her tongue from escaping. 

“You can say that,” she mutters, glaring down at the ground. She’s afraid that if she looks at Josie, if she lets her eyes linger for just a second too long, if she even glances in the siphoner’s direction, Lizzie will follow through with her threat. 

“Oh?” Alaric smiles. “And Lizzie? What’d you think of it?” 

Lizzie grins. 

“I, for one, thought it was a transformative learning experience,” the blonde declares dramatically, smile growing even wider. “I will never look at werewolves the same way again, Daddy. If anything, it has awakened in me a new appreciation for my hairier brethren. I now worship not God, but the moon, and I have resolved only to fall asleep to the sound of barking and howling...” 

Someone giggles. 

It sounds a lot like—

A lot like Josie. 

Hope snaps her gaze up and their eyes meet. Josie tries to hide another giggle and smiles right at her, like they’re both in on some joke. The tribrid smiles back before she can help herself. 

Reality comes crashing down when she remembers what Lizzie had said. Swallowing hard and smile dropping, she glances away and stares back down at the floor. She can’t let Josie know. She won’t. 

“Fear not, sir Alpha Jed,” Lizzie continues on uninterrupted, “my sister’s weird, whale ocean noises are no more—“ 

“Alright, girl,” Kaleb cuts her off. _Finally_. Jed stands next to him, looking pissed off. “I’m going to stop you there before you offend every other werewolf in this joint. Even _I_ feel like kicking your ass.” 

Lizzie pouts. “Dad,” she whines. 

“Sorry.” Alaric doesn’t look very sorry. “He’s right.” 

“Whatever.” Lizzie puts her hands on her hips and looks around. Next to her, Hope seethes. How can the blonde just act like nothing happened? “I’m getting hungry. Can we go find somewhere to eat?” 

“We literally just ate,” Alyssa deadpans. Hope makes a sound of agreement at the back of her throat. If she was hungry before, she definitely isn’t now. Not after what happened. 

And, if she’s being honest, the tribrid doesn’t want to be here. She just wants to go back to the hotel and hide in the bathroom. Her heart is still pounding from a few minutes ago. She’s sure everyone else around her can hear it, which makes it even worse. 

“I don’t know, sweetie,” Alaric murmurs, checking his watch. “We still have another event that I wanted all of us to go to before dinner. It won’t be a long one. Do you mind waiting a little?” 

Lizzie smiles sweetly. For a second, Hope can swear that the blonde glances at her. “Not at all.” 

Alaric gives a tight smile in response and starts to lead them towards their next event, whatever that is. Hope thinks that she can remember him mentioning something about a control exercise for vampires.

She really doesn’t have much time to think about it. The tribrid almost chokes on her own saliva when she realizes that Josie is moving to the back of the group. 

Where Hope is. 

By herself. 

“Hey,” the siphoner says, offering up a shy smile. Hope absentmindedly notes that she has a small, potted plant in her hand. She can’t recognize what kind it is. It must be a magical one. The leaves of it are glowing pink. 

“Hey.” Hope tries to play it cool. She gestures offhandedly to the pot in Josie’s hand. “How was your, uh, plant thing?” 

“Good,” Josie tells her, smiling. “The instructor started handing out some plant samples at the end.” 

With somewhat of a sly smirk and a pink tint to her cheeks, she adds, “Alyssa was really bitter that I got one and she didn’t.” 

“Oh?” Hope smirks a little, too, as she thinks about it. “You might have to sleep with one eye open tonight.” 

That gets a small laugh out of the other girl. Hope finds that she likes the sound of it. A lot more than she would have thought possible. But whatever. She won’t linger on the thought. 

“I think I’ll be okay,” Josie jokes back, bumping their shoulders together as they walk, and _wow_ —

They’re close enough to bump their shoulders together as they walk. Close enough that their sides keep brushing with every step. Hope’s heart starts to race at the revelation. 

“What kind of plant is that, anyway?” she asks, just to distract herself from the fireworks going off in her chest. 

Josie beams at the question, like she can’t wait to start talking about it. 

“It’s a pink modus,” she explains, proudly holding it up for the tribrid to see. “It’s a genus of thirteen species that belongs to the family _eritque arcus modus_. They can only grow up to two feet tall, but they’re really pretty. You know what mood rings are, right?” 

Hope nods thoughtfully. She knows that non-supernaturals have a different version of it than they do. 

“Well, this is basically a mood ring, but in plant form,” Josie says, almost shaking with excitement. “The default color for this one is pink, which means that the caretaker of the plant is content.” 

Hope glances at the plant in Josie’s hands, finding that the leaves are glowing a brighter pink than they were the last time she looked. 

“The girl in front of me at the demo got one with a default color of yellow. It was so cute.” Blushing, the brunette adds, “She, um, she actually thought I was you.” 

She fiddles with Hope’s lanyard, as if in explanation. It’s adorable. Hope has to look away. She can already feel her throat closing up with longing. Well, not longing. She and Josie aren’t like that. 

“She asked me for an autograph.” 

Hope raises her eyebrows at that, ignoring the sudden warmth in her chest. “Really?” 

Josie nods with a grin. “I forged your signature on her phone case.” 

Hope blushes. She doesn’t know exactly why. Maybe it’s because Josie knows what her signature looks like, maybe it’s because Josie is talking to her, smiling at her, maybe it’s just because of Josie. 

She opens her mouth to reply, to stutter out something lame and embarrass herself somehow, but a glimpse of blonde hair and blue eyes stops her. 

A few feet away, Lizzie Saltzman has turned her head around at an odd angle in order to glare at Hope. She narrows her eyes pointedly, causing the tribrid’s face to drop. 

The smile slips off her face and the little bits of color in her cheeks does the same. She looks like she’s seen a ghost. Or rather, like _she_ is a ghost. 

“Hope?” 

The tribrid blinks and looks literally anywhere but Josie, avoiding her eyes. She might die if Lizzie decides that she wants to say something possibly humiliating and embarrass her. Especially if she wants to mention the thing about mates. 

If she does, Josie won’t ever look at her the same anymore. Over something that isn’t even true. A dry, bitter laugh tears from her throat. Hope curses the blonde in her head for making her feel like this. 

“What’s wrong?” Suddenly, Josie stops walking and tries to pull Hope off to the side. Her plant is now glowing a light blue. 

“Nothing.” Hope keeps walking, shrugging the other girl off. It won’t do well for Lizzie to see that they’ve separated from the group. Alone. Together. “Don’t worry.” 

“Well,” Josie jokes, “I wasn’t going to before you said that.” When Hope doesn’t laugh, doesn’t even look in her direction, really, a small frown downturns her lips. 

The plant she’s carrying darkens. Just a little.

“Hey, come on,” the siphoner says, scrunching her eyebrows together. Something slimy in Hope’s stomach twists. It feels like guilt. “You can tell me.” 

Hope turns her head over her shoulder to hide the way her jaw clenches. When the tribrid speaks, she can’t quite meet Josie’s eyes. 

“I’m serious, Josie,” she tells her, walking a little faster, now. The name sounds cold and unworthy between her lips. “Let it go.” 

Josie scoffs and does just that. She walks away and catches up with the rest of the group, leaving Hope behind. The tribrid watches her go, feeling absolutely sick to her own stomach. 

She stays like that until they reach their next event, entering somewhat of a small room filled with vampires. A few wolves are scattered around, too, but there are barely any witches or warlocks. 

“Hello, all,” the instructor of the event greets as they come in. Hope is pretty sure that he’s a vampire himself. “We’ll get started in a few minutes.” 

The tribrid sighs and wonders if she can slip out without anyone noticing. Then again, Alaric keeps eyeing her suspiciously, and it’s not like Josie isn’t all but blatantly staring at her, either. And _fuck_ , if Hope isn’t staring back just as hard when she’s not looking. 

A few minutes later, the instructor at the front of the room readjusts his microphone and calls for everyone’s attention. 

“How is everyone doing?” he asks, but he doesn’t bother to hear the response. “Good, good. Having fun, I hope. Today we’ll be doing some exercises primarily for vampires, but for the werewolves and magic users that are also with us, please feel free to join in and learn a thing or two.” 

Hope crosses her arms and rolls her eyes. 

“Most of these activities will be done in partners, but I do have a few group exercises planned,” the instructor continues. “For our first partnered activity, we’ll be starting off with a bit of a challenge to test your control with bloodlust.” 

He takes out a pocket watch and holds it up for everyone to see. 

“I have a timer here set for two minutes,” he says. “When I start the time, I want you to find your choice of partner. One of you will get within feeding distance of the other.” 

Hope raises her eyebrows when she starts to see where this is going. A few people inside the room begin to whisper and murmur about. 

“Yes.” The instructor nods. “Close enough to feed, but far enough to not. The goal of this exercise is to control yourself and hold out against the urge to drain your partner. I want you to embrace your instincts. Let your vampire side come out, but don’t let it overpower you. Hold your fangs over the other person’s neck, but don’t bite down. You’ll stay that way for two minutes, and when the timer is done, we’ll switch roles. Then, your partner will do the same and vice-versa. Does everyone understand?” 

Hope shakes her head. That fucking sounds like the dumbest fucking idea on the fucking planet. The people around her seem to not like it very much either, because some of them start to complain. 

The man at the front of the room pretends not to hear any of it. 

“Great.” He grins, flashing his white, perfect teeth. “Now, if everyone could please go find a partner. Someone you trust, or if you’d like to make this fun, someone you don’t.” 

His eyes glint darkly as he chuckles. No one moves. “That was a joke.” 

No one laughs. “Okay. Sorry.” He frowns. “Go ahead and find your partners. I’ll give you a minute.” 

A beat of silence passes where Hope doesn’t know what to do with herself. It seems that everyone else doesn’t know, either. 

After the silence drags on for a little too long, the instructor starts to grow impatient. 

“Quickly, now!” he says. 

That gets people moving rather fast. Dorian and Emma step off to the side together, while MG goes straight for Lizzie. 

“I don’t think so.” Alaric grabs the boy by his collar and pulls him back. “MG, you can partner with me.” 

MG pouts. “But—“ 

“My daughter is off limits,” the older man cuts him off with a pointed look. “At least until you get your bloodlust under control. Got it?” 

“Got it,” MG agrees with a small grimace. Hope kind of feels bad for him. 

A few feet away, Kaleb and Jed are having a game of tug-a-war with Alyssa between them as the rope. 

“She’s my partner.” Jed tugs Alyssa to his side. 

“No.” Kaleb tugs the witch back to his side. “She’s mine.” 

“Not this again,” Lizzie mutters underneath her breath. It’s not lost on Josie.

“What do you mean?” she asks, an innocent, confused scrunch to her eyebrows. Hope bites her lip and stares down at the ground. “Did I miss something?” 

“I don’t know. _Hope_.” The tribrid jumps about a foot in the air at the sound of her name. Lizzie turns to her with a sugary-sweet smile. “Did she?” 

“No,” Hope says quickly. Too quickly. “Not at all.” 

She’s saved from the curious look Josie gives her by Alaric. 

“Alyssa,” the man says gently, “who would you prefer to do this with?” 

For once in her life, Alyssa doesn’t have a witty retort or clever remark prepared. Hope watches as the witch looks between the two boys, who are both glaring at each other, and chooses neither.

“What do you mean, neither of us?” Jed asks. Kaleb scoffs next to him. They’re both wearing identical dejected expressions. 

“I think it’s pretty clear,” Lizzie tells them slowly, like she’s talking to children. Kaleb and Jed stop glaring at each other so that they can glare at the blonde. 

“Thank you for speaking up, Lizzie.” Alaric smiles. “You and Alyssa can be partners.” 

“What?” Lizzie drops open her mouth dramatically. “How was that, in any way, me volunteering?” 

Hope can’t help it. She snickers and hides a smile behind her hand. Well, she tries to hide it. Lizzie catches it anyways. She whirls around and pins her with a scowl. 

“What are you laughing about, _Snoopy_?” She quirks an eyebrow at her, the nickname an obvious reference to their conversation earlier. Hope has to grit her teeth together to force her mouth to shut. 

“Oh? Nothing?” Lizzie smirks. Hope feels that same spike of irritation course through her veins. A growl rumbles in her chest. “Should I give you something funny that we can _all_ laugh about, then?” 

“Lizzie,” Alaric scolds, not for the first time or even the tenth time this trip. “Be nice.” 

From the front of the room, the instructor calls out, “Does everyone have their partners?” For the most part, no one pays him any attention. 

“Dad!” Lizzie huffs out, deciding to ignore Hope for the time being. “It won’t make sense if Alyssa and I pair up.” 

“Honey—“

“We’re both witches,” the blonde explains. “And, might I add, I hate her!” 

Alyssa giggles, like she’s amused. “Love you, too, Lizbear,” she says. 

Alaric sighs tiredly and turns to his other daughter with a pleading look in his eyes. 

“Josie? Do you think you can...?” 

The siphoner gives him a sheepish smile.

“Sorry.” Her cheeks flush a pretty, dark pink color. Not that Hope is looking or anything. Because she’s not. “Hope and I are already partners.” 

Wait. _What?_

When did that happen? 

The tribrid snaps her head up, stammering over her words. She watches as Josie steps closer to her and nudges her softly, eyes downcast. 

“If that’s okay with you...?” She trails her words off like a question, voice a little more than hopeful. A little insecure, too. 

It makes Hope feel very guilty for what she’s about to do. 

“Oh,” she breathes out, catching a look from Lizzie out of the corner of her eye. The blonde is nearly boiling with anger, shooting daggers in her direction. Hope doesn’t understand. Why does Lizzie care so much? 

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Hope tells the brunette, not sounding entirely convinced that it isn’t. 

Josie’s face falls. The tribrid looks away so she doesn’t have to see the pout on her lips. Alaric doesn’t seem to hear or notice any of it. 

“Okay. Josie will pair with Hope,” he says. Hope opens her mouth to argue, but that might make Josie even start crying, so she doesn’t. Only because it would be rude and she doesn’t want to hurt the siphoner. Not because she wants to be partners with Josie or anything. 

“Lizzie will pair up with Alyssa and Jed with Kaleb...” Alaric turns back to Jed and Kaleb, looking uncertain. “Actually, on second thought, I’m not sure that you two won’t try to rip each other’s throats out. Lizzie, partner with Jed instead. Alyssa, go with Kaleb. How does that sound?” 

Hope rolls her eyes. How predictable of Alaric, to not pair his daughters with any vampires. Endanger everyone but them. Well. Not that Hope is complaining. 

Before anyone can answer Alaric, the instructor at the front of the room starts talking again. 

“Alright, everyone, get with your partners!” he calls out, loud enough that—this time—everyone actually listens to him. Hope watches Josie set her plant down on the floor carefully. It’s glowing a dim pink. 

“Now, for the activity,” the instructor continues. “Please try to keep an open mind. If you feel that you’re about to lose control, there is nothing wrong with admitting that and taking a step back. I would much rather have some shame and embarrassment than a repeat of last year.” 

Huh. It makes Hope wonder what happened last year. She and Josie share a look, which Hope immediately glances away from. Her heart skips a beat. She reminds herself not to look the other girl in the eye for too long again. 

“With that in mind, your time starts now!” 

Hope watches the other girl worry her bottom lip between her teeth before releasing it. “Do you want to go first?” Josie asks shyly. 

“Um.” Hope clears her throat. “Sure.” 

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

Hope plants her feet on the ground and tries to keep her distance, doing her best to lean forward but somehow not moving at all. She clenches her teeth together and tries to focus on anything but Josie. 

The ceiling. 

The floor. 

Everyone else in the fucking room. 

_ Anything but Josie.  _

All of her efforts go in vain when the siphoner makes a small, impatient huffing noise and bunches her hand in the fabric of Hope’s shirt. She pulls the tribrid into her, and Hope loses her footing and stumbles forward.

She wraps her fingers loosely around Josie’s right hipbone to steady herself, and then her mouth is not an inch away from the other girl’s throat. Her nose finds purchase at the soft skin of her pulse point, tickled by a few loose strands of the brunette’s hair. 

The tribrid inhales deeply. 

And instantly regrets it. 

She is immediately assaulted by the sweet scent of fruity shampoo and something earthy like a garden or a forest. It reminds the tribrid of the warmth and comfort she feels running in the woods as a wolf, and she sucks in another breath without realizing it. Her eyes are clenched shut—when had she closed them?—and she sees nothing but gold. 

“Come on!” The instructor’s voice comes from the front of the room. “Don’t be shy, folks. Let’s see those fangs!” 

Hope darts her eyes around the room a little insecurely, watching as everyone else listens to the instructor and does as told. 

Damn it. 

Swallowing a mouthful of venom that stings the inside of her throat on the way down, Hope parts her lips and bares her teeth, hovering the canines of them over Josie’s neck. They grow long enough that Hope has to lean away a little bit, just so she doesn’t accidentally pierce the skin. 

Not that she would ever do that. Not on purpose. No. She’s not afraid that she’ll hurt Josie. She would never do that. Yeah. 

Sometime along the way, Hope loses track of time and space. Everyone else, everything else disappears. It’s just her and Josie. There is no one else, nothing else. 

Josie stays still through it all. The only move she makes is to tilt her head to the side, baring the smooth, tanned skin of her neck. Other than that, she stays still. 

Strangely still. 

Every few seconds, her fingers tighten their hold on Hope’s shirt, as if to ground herself, but she doesn’t move. Not really. The tribrid can’t tell if she’s even breathing, though she’s not completely sure over the sound of her heart pounding in her ears. 

_Control_ , she reminds herself. She’s a tribrid. The only one of her kind. She needs to show control. She won’t hurt Josie. She’s not afraid. She’s just a little startled, that’s all. She hadn’t been expecting something like _this_. This _intimate_. That’s it. 

“Pay attention to your urges, your senses,” the instructor says, somewhere distantly. Hope’s not really listening. “Acknowledge them, accept them, own up to them, but do not let them control you. What do you hear? What do you smell?” 

Hope inhales and accidentally catches another trace of Josie’s scent. She tries to suppress the unhelpful groan unraveling at the back of her throat. Good. _So_ good. It must be ambrosia. 

On the exhale of a sigh, eyes still closed, lost in gold, she murmurs softly, “You smell so good.” 

Josie’s breath noticeably hitches. 

The tribrid freezes. Oh. Oh no. _That_ wasn’t part of the activity. 

She hadn’t meant to say that. At all. 

Hope quickly steps back and shuts her mouth.The sharp points of her canines cut into her lips as she presses them together. She runs her tongue over the chapped skin and tastes blood. 

“Hope, I...” Josie stands across from her, eyes wide and cheeks flushed. 

“Time,” the instructor calls out from the other side of the room. “Switch roles.” 

Josie steps forward, her mouth dropped open like she wants to say something. Hope takes another step back, only for the other girl to follow after her. 

“Nope. I don’t think so.” In a flash of blonde hair and narrowed eyes, Lizzie Saltzman shoves herself between them with an exasperated sigh. “Jo, we’re switching.” 

“What? Why?” the brunette sputters, blushing. On the floor, her plant glows a dim, green color. Hope doesn’t notice. “I didn’t even get to go yet— “

Lizzie pushes her sister away and right into the arms of Jed. 

“Aww, that’s too bad,” the blonde calls out, before completely ignoring Josie and turning back to Hope. 

“You’re peeing,” Lizzie tells her. 

This time, Hope can’t find it in herself to argue. She just clenches her jaw and looks away. 

“I know,” she mutters underneath her breath, so bitterly that it surprises the both of them. 

A vampire couple that had been practically making out next to the two girls turns around and gives them a weird look.

“She has a piss kink,” Lizzie explains with a careless shrug of her shoulders. 

“Nice,” one of the vampires says, wiping a spot of blood dripping from his mouth. The pair smile and turn back to each other, while Lizzie turns back to her own partner. 

Hope is going to kill her.

—

For dinner, they decide to go back to the hotel and eat at the buffet. The dining room is spacious and elegant, just like the rest of the hotel. It’s quite crowded, too. There’s already a large line for the buffet when they get there.

Alaric grabs a round table at the back—away from all of the other guests, of course—and forces everyone to sit down, whether they’re hungry or not. 

That is to say, Hope isn’t hungry. At all. 

If anything, she’s about five seconds away from throwing up everything inside of her and tearing herself apart. Or slamming her head against the table. Or stabbing herself with one of the eating utensils on her right. Those would all work, too. 

Whatever. The truth is, Hope is burning from the inside out. She can feel a part of herself slipping away, or maybe it’s already long gone, or maybe that’s just Josie. Maybe that’s just what it feels like when you finally, actually give a single shit about someone that isn’t yourself. 

Obsession? 

Is that what it is? 

_ Insanity?  _

Those are the only words that come to mind for something like this. She’s never been crazy about boys or girls or anyone, really. And certainly never about Josie Saltzman. 

Things had been easier before this trip. _Too_ easy. Hope had never thought about Josie like this before. Now she can’t seem to get her out of her head. Or maybe it’s always been like this, and she’s only telling herself that this is a new development to feel better about it. 

What a joke. 

She can’t believe that she had embarrassed herself like that earlier. What was she thinking? No. It’s not her fault. It’s Lizzie’s, for putting that stupid fucking idea in her head.

Fuck. Her stomach tightens again. _You smell so good._ Bile rises to the tip of her tongue and scorches her throat on the way back down. _Hope, I..._ God. The tribrid shivers. Why couldn’t she have just kept her mouth fucking shut? Why couldn’t she have just fucking stayed quiet? 

Funny. Now she sits, with her back to a fancy dining room chair, and she is silent. 

Josie sits to her right, but Hope swears she can feel her just underneath her skin, coursing through her veins like magic, pulling at her like an itch she’ll never be rid of. The siphoner is silent, too. 

“So, kids, what’d you learn today?” Alaric speaks up from across the table, trying to start a conversation as they wait for the server to come and take their drink orders. 

“That werewolves have mates,” Jed blurts out, almost right away, his eyes glued on Alyssa, who is sitting on Hope’s left. The tribrid cringes and shrinks back into her own seat. 

“Is that right?” Alaric sits up, looking more than a little interested. He doesn’t seem to be offended at all that Jed isn’t paying any attention to him, or that he’s staring right at Alyssa when he speaks. 

“Yeah,” he murmurs softly, uncharacteristically softly. Out of the corner of her eye, Hope catches a short glimpse of Josie shifting in her seat. Like her father, she looks more than a little interested, too. “Someone that will love us unconditionally. Someone to protect and cherish.” 

Hope rolls her eyes so hard it hurts. Still, that doesn’t prepare her for what Jed says next. 

He takes a deep, steadying breath before confessing, “And I think I know who mine is.” 

_ Oh, God.  _

Alyssa freezes. Everyone does. Well, everyone but Lizzie, who seems to be struggling to keep a straight face. She clamps a hand over her mouth to hold in her laughter. Hope chances a peek at Kaleb, who looks pissed. 

“Alyssa—“ Jed starts, but someone interrupts him before he can finish. 

“Hi, folks.” A young guy with dirty blonde hair and a pair of glasses pops up out of thin air at the front of their table. “My name’s Levi. I’ll be your server this evening. How is everyone doing?” 

“Thank God,” Hope and Lizzie mutter at the same time. They both know exactly where _that_ was going. 

“Good, thank you,” Josie tells the server, always the first to be polite. The rest of the group is still staring at Jed, Kaleb, and Alyssa, glancing between the three of them. “How are you?” 

“I’m doing great.” The server grins. “What would you all like to drink tonight?” 

Hope turns her head over her shoulder and sighs quietly in relief. She had been scared that Lizzie would say something, and was silently pleading with the blonde the entire time to not humiliate her. If she had mentioned anything having to do with Hope and the word _mate_ , the tribrid would have been so screwed. 

“And you?” 

Hope looks up to find that the server is staring expectantly at her, waiting for her drink order. She clears her throat before speaking. 

“Water, please,” she says softly, failing to keep a smile on her face. The server nods and moves over to the person on Hope’s right, Josie. 

The brunette pulls her bottom lip between her teeth, an odd flush to her cheeks. “Do you have any pink lemonade?” she asks, looking embarrassed about it. 

Something flutters in Hope’s chest.

It’s kind of cute—

No. It’s _not_. 

What is Hope thinking? It’s not _cute_. Josie isn’t cute. Josie isn’t even her friend. She needs to stop thinking about her as if they’re more than strangers, before the other girl finds out. Before she figures it out. Before Lizzie tells her. Before she realizes that Hope is a fucking creep who has been staring at her all day and thinking about her _constantly_ like she has any _right_ to do that at all. 

Because it’s not like Josie ever thinks about Hope back, or would ever even humor the idea of it. No. That’s just not possible. 

She can’t let herself get her hopes up. Why would Josie Saltzman ever want something, anything to do with her, a Mikaelson? No, it’s better for everyone involved that Hope pushes her away before she gets too close, before she realizes that Hope is the monster her namesake makes her out to be. 

Yeah. So, it’s not cute. _Not cute._ Not at all. 

After the server brings them back all of their drinks, Alaric stands up from the table and claps his hands together firmly. 

“Alright. I’m starving,” he says, glancing at the long buffet table. “Everyone ready to go get some food?” 

Hope’s stomach clenches. The thought of eating right now just makes her nauseous, the thought of being here right now, being here with everyone right now, makes it even worse. She takes a step back from the table, overwhelmed with the urge to leave. To get out. To run away. Before she does something stupid. 

“I think I forgot something back in my room,” the tribrid lies, pushing her chair in. She keeps her eyes carefully on the ground, ignoring Josie’s gaze on her, searing into her like a brand. “I’m gonna go get it.” 

“Oh.” Alaric frowns. “What’d you forget?” 

Hope pales. Just a little. She takes another step back. 

“My phone.” 

A pause. 

“We can literally all see it in your pocket,” Lizzie deadpans. 

“Oh, well...then I forgot something else,” Hope tells her, shrugging casually. 

Josie steps toward her. “I’ll help you get it,” she offers, a shy smile playing at her lips. 

“No,” Hope says quickly. “It’s fine.” 

Josie probably has no idea that she’s planning on bailing the second she leaves the table. All she wants to do is be alone, painfully alone, and catch up on the sleep she couldn’t seem to get last night. Maybe she can even take a shower. Yeah. A hot, long shower sounds nice right now. That’s what she tells herself. She likes to be alone.   


Right? 

“Are you sure?” Josie asks, pouting slightly. The look on her face is so innocent, so oblivious, that Hope hates it. Why can’t the siphoner understand that this isn’t what she truly wants? 

“Jesus, Jo,” Hope snaps, before she can stop herself. She watches the brunette flinch, and she pretends that it doesn’t absolutely take her breath away. “I said no.” 

Another pause. 

This one longer than the last. 

It’s even more suffocating, too. Hope feels heat crawl up her throat and grow thick in her chest. Or maybe that’s just her heart trying to escape from her mouth and jump into Josie’s hands. 

“Damn, girl,” Kaleb whistles quietly. Everyone else is just as surprised at the outburst. 

“Hope,” Alaric admonishes, knitting his eyebrows together with something between concern and disappointment. “You’re taking her with you whether you like it or not. Remember what I said earlier? We stay in pairs.” 

Hope nods stiffly, and she doesn’t mention that she can take care of herself. She’s afraid that if she continues to argue the matter, everyone will be able to see right through her, or worse, she’ll hurt Josie’s feelings. More than she already has. 

“Okay.” She bites her lip, lowering her head just enough. “Sorry.” 

Hope has half the mind to just sit back down and stay here, but since she already made such a big deal about it, she has no choice but to go back to the hotel room with Josie and look for something she didn’t actually forget. Her pride won’t be able to take doing anything else. 

“Hey, MG,” she hears Josie say, “can you watch my plant while I’m gone? I don’t want anyone to steal it.” 

“Trust me,” Alyssa mutters sarcastically. “You don’t have to worry about that.” 

They both ignore her.

“Of course, Jo,” MG tells Josie, taking the plant carefully in one hand and patting her on the arm with the other. Hope looks up and watches him carry the damn thing to the buffet table. The rest of the group follow after him. 

Then, it’s just Hope and Josie. 

The tribrid can feel her face heat up as the reality of her situation finally sets in. And the reality is this:

Hope lied about forgetting something in her room, and not only does she now have to clean up her mess, but she also somehow dragged Josie into it and has to get her out, too. 

The tribrid gulps miserably and starts to head over to the elevators, walking fast enough that Josie has to jog to catch up to her. 

While they wait for one of the elevators to open, the siphoner decides to ask, voice small and almost afraid, but, no, that can’t be right,it can’t, “Why didn’t you want me to come with you?” 

Hope stares at the closed elevator doors and sees nothing. 

_ Why?  _

There are so many reasons, but none that the tribrid can say out loud or even admit to herself. 

_ Why?  _

Why, _nothing_. She can’t come up with a good excuse or any excuse at all, so she says nothing. 

If Josie’s offended by Hope blatantly ignoring her, she doesn’t show it. Other than a small, brief frown that looks more like a pout than anything else, she shakes out of it and tries to put on a happy mask and a bright smile. 

Her smile is nice, Hope notices. How can she not? Josie’s lips are full and pink from constantly worrying them with her teeth. For an odd, brief moment, the tribrid wonders if she’s wearing chapstick or lip gloss. 

“So...” Josie prods her innocently, like Hope isn’t being awful and rude and all things terrible to her, like they’re friends. “What’d you forget again?” 

Um.

Hope doesn’t have a good answer to that either. 

The elevator doors end up saving her. They open with a _ding_ , and both Hope and Josie step inside.

The second the doors close after them, Josie turns to face her. The sudden movement distracts Hope, and she forgets to hit one of the elevator buttons to take them up to their room. She also forgets how to breathe. 

“Why are you ignoring me?” The brunette grabs her arm and forces Hope to look Josie in the eye, but the tribrid is stronger and she shrugs her off easily. 

“I’m not.” 

The elevator is too small. Josie is too close. Hope tries to focus on the air in her lungs and the ground beneath her feet, but it’s getting harder to do that by the second. Can’t Josie understand that she needs the other girl to back off before she makes a mistake? 

“You are.” 

Hope huffs and rolls her eyes. They’re not friends, remember? They’re strangers. It’s better this way. 

“Don’t give me that look,” Josie bites out and faces away from her, and wow, Hope has never seen her this angry before. She was smiling just a minute ago. 

“ _No_.” The siphoner turns back, willing Hope to look over at her. Hope’s eyes stay on the floor. On the walls. Anywhere else. It’s easy. Easier. Maybe that’ll keep her from stealing glances at Josie’s lips. “You know what?”

Finally, Hope twists around and lets their eyes meet. It feels like fire on ice. That must explain why Hope feels as though she is burning cold. 

“You’re impossible to talk to,” Josie rants, and _fine_ , Hope can do this. She can do _this_. She can let the other girl get this out of her system. “You don’t let anyone get close to you. This entire trip, I’ve been trying to figure out why—why you act like...” 

She shoves her hands in front of her and gestures to Hope. “Act like this! All the time.” 

She laughs bitterly. It cuts Hope’s ears like glass. “And I thought that maybe I could help you,” Josie says, “so I made this big, great plan to try to become your friend, but you’re not making it very easy.” 

Hope almost rolls her eyes again. _Why should I make it easy for her?_ she thinks, but her heart is screaming, frankly, to shut the fuck up. She doesn’t. She can’t. 

“Honestly,” she drawls lazily, “I’m not sure why you’d even care enough to try.” 

Josie’s eyes flash, obviously hurt. 

“It’s ‘cause I knew I’d be the only one,” she growls out, and God, she’s so close, too close. Hope swears she can almost smell the lingering scent of her shampoo. Fuck. She needs to stop. _Stop_. “You asshat—“ 

Before Josie can finish her sentence, Hope surges forward and presses Josie into the wall of the elevator, and then her lips are on hers. 

“— _Mmphh_.” 

Hope’s mind blanks. Pins and needles erupt across the blacks of her closed eyelids.

It’s clumsy. Messy. Of course, it is. There’s the small problem that Hope isn’t very experienced at this, and then the other, slightly bigger problem that Josie wasn’t expecting it. 

There’s a pause, then, where the siphoner freezes up and goes completely rigid. It makes something desperate and scared like panic tear through Hope’s chest and, heart in throat, she presses her lips more insistently against the siphoner’s, trying to get a response, trying to get any response at all. 

Josie stays frozen against her for a few, painstaking seconds before she starts to move her own lips. She releases a sweet sigh at the back of her throat and finally relaxes into it. 

Hope answers the other girl with a low groan of her own, tilting her head and deepening the kiss. It’s soft but urgent, as if both are still fighting from their argument but neither cares who wins. The tribrid has the brief thought that the siphoner tastes like watered down lemonade and raspberries, and damn it, if it isn’t the best thing she’s ever had. 

She moves closer and fuses their hips together, cornering Josie with two hands on either side of her against the elevator bar. It takes every inch of the self control she has left to hold back, to let Josie take the lead even though her heart is roaring otherwise. 

_Oh, God,_ she realizes. She hadn’t even asked for consent. Hadn’t even _warned_ the girl. Damn it. 

Hope leans back and pulls away, but Josie chases after her lips and almost desperately presses them together again. This action could be innocent enough, maybe in another world, but it comes with this needy, little whine that resounds loudly in Hope’s ears, coupled with the sound of the elevator doors opening, and—

Fuck.

The elevator bar snaps like a toothpick in her hands. 

Josie lets out an overwhelmed squeak as the metal bar crumbles and her back hits the wall. She pushes herself against it and snaps her eyes wide open, pupils blown and lips parted, chest heaving. 

Hope isn’t faring much better. Her hands are held up at her sides in surrender, fingers pale and trembling, an apology half-stuck in her throat. She watches Josie bring her hand to her mouth and run her fingers over her lips. 

“ _Hope_.” 

Oh, God. 

“I’m so sorry—“ 

“It’s okay,” the siphoner says slowly, as if she’s talking to a cornered animal. She gulps, dropping her hand from her lips like a child caught doing something she shouldn’t have been. Her eyes glance down to the elevator bar, widen, linger just a second longer, cheeks flushed. “ _We’re_ okay.” 

Then why doesn’t she feel like it? Hope thinks. 

She stumbles backwards and tries desperately to clear her throat, but she can’t get any words out. With one last look at Josie, she rushes out of the elevator and almost bumps into another person, ignoring the stinging at the back of her eyes, ignoring Josie’s own staring into the back of her head, silently pleading for her to turn back.

What the fuck had gotten into her? Why had she done that? And—

Fuck. Don’t cry. _Don’t cry._

No. She won’t. 

Damn it. Why is she crying? No. She’s not. She just needs to breathe. That’s all. Her brain is deprived of oxygen and it wrongly thinks that crying is the solution. _That’s all._

God. Her chest is still heaving, breathless from moments before. 

As calmly as possible, so she doesn’t attract any unwanted attention, Hope wipes at her eyes and walks back to the buffet hall. By the time she reaches the group’s table, her eyes are dry. 

Lizzie is the only one seated. She already has a plate of food in front of her. Hope suspects that the rest of the group is still getting food from the buffet. 

“Why are you out of breath?” Lizzie asks suspiciously as the tribrid sits down, narrowing her eyes at her. With shaking fingers, Hope reaches for the glass of water in front of her and takes a generous gulp before responding. 

“I, uh, took the stairs,” she says, as an explanation. 

“And where’s my sister?” Lizzie blinks. Hope’s face goes pale. “Didn’t you two go together? Listen, _Mikaelson_ —“ 

The tribrid tries to open her mouth to argue, but a voice on her right speaks up before she can say anything. 

“I’m right here.” 

Next to Hope, Josie Saltzman pulls out her chair and sits down. As if nothing happened. Hope stares down at her plate and refuses to look up. As if nothing ever happened for her, either. Just the way it should have been from the very beginning, just the way it should always be, she knows, but her heart refuses to listen and fall in line. 

“And why are you out of breath?” Lizzie turns to her sister with the same suspicious look she gave Hope. 

Josie’s eyes widen, darting around for an answer. “Oh, well, um, you know...” 

Hope coughs behind her hand. 

“The stairs,” she supplies helpfully, eyes still on her empty plate. “We took the stairs.” 

“ _Oh_ , right! _Right_.” Josie nods vehemently, wringing her hands in her lap like she’s nervous or something. In a smaller voice, she mumbles, “We took the stairs.” 

A beat of silence drags on uncomfortably.

“So let me get this straight,” Lizzie says slowly, very slowly. “You _both_ took the stairs, yet you got here at different times?” 

“We raced,” Josie blurts out, but the red blush on her face betrays her. Hope’s eyes linger on her swollen lips before she catches herself. Damn it. “Hope won.”

“O-kay,” Lizzie says, dragging the word out as she sticks her fork into a piece of lettuce. It’s obvious that she doesn’t believe them one bit, and Josie certainly isn’t helping their case. 

It’s too much all at once, and Hope is standing up before she really knows what she’s doing. She just needs to get out of here before she implodes. “I’m, uh, gonna go.” 

Lizzie sets her fork down dramatically and raises an unimpressed eyebrow. 

“ _Again_?” 

“Get food, I mean,” Hope adds quickly, turning pink. She leaves the table without once looking back or glancing at Josie, and since she isn’t paying all that much attention, she ends up on the wrong end of the buffet table. 

Hope sighs as she looks down at all of the candies and sweets. She swipes a few cookies and brownies on her plate, and asks the man behind the dessert table for a cup of raspberry sorbet ice cream. 

He gives her a really small scoop. She pouts but takes the cup, moving onto the slices of cake and pies nearby. She takes a slice of banana cream pie and slowly heads back to the table. 

She gets there before Josie does, and one look around the room tells her that the brunette is serving herself some kind of cold pasta salad. Hope swallows hard and tries to forget the taste of lemonade and raspberries. 

She looks down at her plate. Damn it. Why had she asked for raspberry sorbet ice cream? She should have just stuck with the brownies and cookies.

Hope chooses to stuff her face with a cookie while she waits for Josie to get back. Everyone else at the table already has a plate in front of them, and if her mouth is full, she can’t talk. 

Surely. 

Right? 

Josie comes back to the table within minutes and Hope pretends not to notice her sit down. She pretends not to notice that the siphoner barely picks at her food all through dinner, and she definitely does _not_ notice how wet her lips glisten whenever she takes a sip from her cup of pink lemonade. 

She also pretends not to notice that Alyssa, Kaleb, and Jed are caught in a three-way staring contest, and even worse, she pretends not to notice the fact that Alaric keeps waving the server over to refill his glass of wine every few minutes, or seconds. It seems like seconds. 

“How’s everyone’s food?” the man asks, once they’ve all gone back to the buffet table to get seconds and thirds. Emma sips at her own glass of wine before speaking up. 

“Absolutely amazing, Ric,” she says, through her thick accent. Alaric smiles, a little brighter than Hope usually sees. “I admit, I didn’t expect this kind of food from a hotel buffet.” 

Dorian hums in agreement along with the rest of the students. Hope stays silent and quietly swirls around her cup of ice cream with her spoon. It melted a few minutes ago. 

After a few beats of silence, she puts down the spoon and ignores the ice cream. She doesn’t want to accidentally spill it. MG had somehow knocked over his glass of water halfway through dinner, and the server had brought him back a little kid’s sippy cup to replace it. 

“Good. Good.” Alaric nods to himself and swallows the food in his mouth before talking again. “Is there anything anyone would like to talk about?” 

No one speaks up for a solid minute. Hope bites the inside of her cheek. “In particular?” she asks. 

Alaric nods excitedly, relieved that someone decided to put him out of his misery. “Yes. Anything.” 

“Oh,” Hope breathes. “Then, no.” 

Someone snickers. Hope is pretty sure it’s Alyssa Chang. She watches Alaric visibly deflate and presses her lips together to hide a smile. The smile slips right off her face when she feels someone kick her underneath the table. She frowns and darts her eyes around the table, but everyone looks innocent enough. 

“Jed? I think you had something to say earlier?” Alaric continues obliviously, desperate to make conversation. 

This time, Jed shakes his head and keeps his mouth shut. Hope watches Josie glance around the table nervously. And, _yeah_ , it’s a little awkward, but Hope has sort of gotten used to it over the years, so she doesn’t really care. 

“That’s okay. Anyone else?” 

Alaric looks around uncertainly. “...Maybe about how your day went? Or just something you want to bring up?” 

The table goes silent once again. Easygoing chatter and conversation buzzes around them. 

“Okay, well,” the man continues, “I want to get us talking somehow. I feel like we’ve all been so caught up in our own heads lately. Why don’t we all go around the table and say some nice things about each other? I think that would be a great way to open up and have some fun.” 

Hope raises her eyebrows. When no one says anything for the third time, Alaric downs his entire glass of wine and licks at his lips. 

“Dorian!” he blurts, clapping his friend on the back. “Why don’t you start?” 

Dorian smiles and sets his knife and fork down on top of his plate. His eyes twinkle as they find Emma’s. 

“Alright.” He clears his throat. “Emma—“

“Hey, _Josie_ ,” Alaric cuts him off. He swallows hard, dragging his eyes away from the couple like he can’t bear to watch them. “You always set a good example, honey. You can go first.” 

Josie blushes, obviously not expecting to have been singled out. 

“Oh, um...” The siphoner sits up and looks around the table, her eyes wide and a little darker than usual. It must be the dim lighting. Yes. That’s it. “Do I just choose...anyone I want?” 

“Sure.” Alaric nods, giving Josie his full attention and deciding to ignore Dorian next to him, who is giving him a weird look. 

Hope chuckles quietly to herself, but her laughter dies like thunder in her throat when she realizes that Josie is looking right at her. She swears she can feel her heart stop. 

Oh. Is Josie choosing _Hope_? 

Well, not like that. She isn’t _choosing_ her. Not exactly. Hope curses inwardly. She should have phrased it better in her head, because now her mouth is suddenly dry and her chest feels tight and—

“Okay. Hope.” The tribrid watches as Josie scoots her chair an inch or two over and nervously runs a hand through her hair. “God, where do I start?” 

Hope doesn’t know. 

“We’ve known each other for years,” Josie says, and her eyes are suspiciously wet. Maybe that’s why they’re a little darker than Hope has ever seen them. “We’ve never really talked, but when we do you’re usually...” 

Hope swallows thickly. She knows what’s coming. Mean. Rude. Angry. Bitter. Evil. Horrible—

“Nice?” The uplilt to the brunette’s voice makes it seem like a question more than anything else. Josie pauses and glances around the table, eyeing her sister tentatively for a few seconds. “To _me_ , at least.” 

Hope blinks, surprised. 

“Well,” Josie corrects herself with a small, nervous laugh. “You were pretty mean to me a few minutes ago, but you _more_ than made up for it. Haha.” 

Um. Hope doesn’t know what to do with that. It kind of just sits between them, and the entire table. No one else really knows what to do with it, either. Josie obviously didn’t mean to even say it. It makes Hope wonder...

“Oops.” Josie blushes, dark and red and pretty and, God, Hope can’t look away. She really fucking can’t. “Sorry, I’m getting kinda off track.” 

Hope stares down at her empty plate, wishing she had a cookie in her mouth. She already ate them all. Now she might have to talk at the end of this. Whatever this is. 

“Let’s see,” Josie babbles on. “Your hair is really pretty. I mean, all of you is really pretty. You know, your face, your eyes, your lips. Oh, I like your lips a lot. They feel pretty nice, too—“ 

“Okay!” Alaric interrupts, his face an odd mix between purple and red. It’s understandable. His daughter just made it out like she and Hope snuck away to have a quickie earlier or something. “That’s enough. Someone else go.” 

Hope drops open her mouth and stares at Josie. Everyone else is staring at the siphoner, too. Well, the both of them, really. Lizzie looks livid. That bitch. 

“Josie, I...” Hope starts, unsure of where she’s going with it. Josie basically just told everyone that they kissed. 

“No. _No_ ,” Alaric cuts her off before she can get into it. That one, weird vein on his forehead is bulging and threatening to explode. Ew. “I don’t think so. Hope, you’ll do Lizzie.” 

The tribrid frowns. 

“But I want to do Josie,” she says. 

“Yeah, you do,” Jed mutters underneath his breath. Both him and Kaleb snicker. Hope doesn’t find it so funny. 

“That’s _hilarious_ ,” she bites out through clenched teeth. Her eyes flicker gold. She doesn’t care to hide it, sure that any humans that see her will blame it on a trick of the light or a camera flash. “Do you like being alpha, Jed? I wouldn’t—“ 

Under the table, cool fingers slide up her wrist and intertwine loosely with her own. Hope makes a strangled noise at the back of her throat and jumps so high that she slams her knees into the table. She forces herself to stay still as the soft pad of a thumb strokes over the back of her hand. 

“Nevermind,” she mumbles, staring straight ahead so she doesn’t accidentally look at the girl on her right. 

Fuck. _Fuck_. She’s holding hands with Josie Saltzman underneath a fucking table. 

At least, she hasn’t looked down yet, but she’s pretty sure it’s Josie. It would be really weird if it was Alyssa Chang or something. 

“Is she having a stroke?” she hears Kaleb ask. 

“I hope not,” Lizzie hisses back, voice laced with irritation. “I’m still waiting for my compliment.” 

“Hope?” Alaric prods gently. Hope blinks and makes herself snap out of it. Her nerves are thoroughly shot. She thinks her skin must be on fire with how hot she feels. Josie’s soft fingers dancing along the inside of her wrist and up her palm certainly don’t help. 

“Oh. Right,” she murmurs, turning to Lizzie. Hmm. What should she say? _You’re a bitch. I hate you._ No. She needs to think of something nice. 

“You’re cool,” Hope says, at last, sounding a little too stiff. “Sometimes.” 

Lizzie rolls her eyes. 

“That’s not fair,” she grumbles and crosses her arms, “I already knew that.” 

“So?” Hope shrugs. “Learn to take a compliment.” 

The blonde glares at her. 

“I can take a compliment just fine,” she tells her. “Learn to give better ones.” 

Hope opens her mouth to say something possibly cruel when Josie’s hand tightens around hers. She leans back in her chair and says nothing at all. 

She sneaks a glance at Josie, who’s smiling. Damn it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter got over 10k again so i decided to cut it short and just add another chapter, the ending is about 5k words so hopefully it’s easier to read


End file.
